CVS Pharmacy Lets Woman have Asthma Attack and watches

A New Jersey woman suffering an asthma attack was denied an inhaler at a pharmacy

because she was $1.99 short, MyFoxNY.com reported.

Katherine O’Connor and her boyfriend were walking home from McDonald’s in Garwood, N.J., Thursday morning when she had the asthma attack, but she did not have her inhaler with her. She went to a nearby CVS, hoping to get a refill on her inhaler prescription.

But, O’Connor was denied the refill because she did not have enough money to pay for the prescription. The medicine cost just over $21, and the couple was short $1.99.

"I had exactly a $20 bill. It came to $21 and change," said O’Connor’s boyfriend, Jack Brown. "I offered him my cell phone, my wallet. I said, ‘I live right around the corner.’ I come in here all the time."

Brown begged the pharmacist to give his girlfriend the inhaler, as she was on the floor wheezing, but the pharmacist would not give in, he said.

Brown called a friend who is a paramedic, who showed up immediately and treated O’Connor.
When questioned about the incident, a store manager had “no comment.”

“The well-being of our customers is our highest priority and we are looking into this matter,” said a statement from CVS corporate offices. - FOX News Story

I Want Your Money - Movie Trailer

DNC Continues Attack on GOP - Another Watergate?

Karl Rove claims that contributions to his organizations Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads have surged since Democrats attacked him for failing to disclose the group's donors. When I asked Tim Kaine about that this morning on "GMA" he said Rove may be right.

“That should trouble folks. And look the polling I’ve seen suggests the American public cares deeply about this,” the DNC chairman told me. “The prospect of shadowy groups being able to put money in secretly to buy elections, to bypass the rules that the candidates have to follow in terms of disclosing their donors, should worry everybody.”

Kaine also stood by his claim that failure to disclose these donations smacks of Watergate – despite offering no evidence that any laws have been broken.

“Watergate was a scandal that involved a number of things including campaign financing that was being done with dollars bills in sacks handed over to the committee to reelect the president,” he said.

“And the Republicans have made, I believe, a concerted effort to divert as much campaign funding as they can into non-reporting entities aided by the Supreme Court decision, the Citizens United, so the American public will not know who is funding the campaign,” he added. - ABC News Story

Problem with this whole attack, is that the Democrats including Obama did the exact same thing in every election in the last decade. The only difference from then, is now the GOP has not only caught up to them, they have surpassed them.

Sen. Candidate Hits nail on head about Financial Collapse

Government action, beginning with federal legislation passed 33 years ago to help low-income people buy homes, was the cause of the economic collapse, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ron Johnson said Wednesday.

Johnson told Journal Sentinel reporters and editors, as well as its Reader Advisory Committee, that the seeds of the collapse began in 1977 with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act.

"What caused this economic downturn, collapse, was pretty much government action," Johnson said. "It wasn't helped by the big banks. I always refer to it as caused by Washington, propelled by big banks and paid for by the American public."

Decades after its passage, the federal law that helped low-income and disadvantaged people get loans to buy their own homes continues to be hotly debated. The federal law applied only to depository institutions, not private, unregulated mortgage lenders.

In Johnson's view, the law "started forcing banks to make loans to people who couldn't afford to pay them back . . . "

Asked if the banks were forced to lend to people who couldn't afford it, Johnson said: "They threatened to bring the Department of Justice in to, I guess, to prosecute banks that would be accused of redlining. Not making loans to people in certain areas."

Johnson said the law made it easy for banks to lend money.

"We'll have Fannie (Mae) and Freddie (Mac) guarantee those things so you can sell those things on the open market," Johnson said. "What does that do to a bank? First of all, if I don't make those loans, I might have Department of Justice action taken against me. But if I make the loan, I can get all of the origination fees on it, I can make a lot of money and, by the way, I don't have to incur any of the risk. The last thing you want to do when somebody is trying to make a loan is remove the risk of making the loan. You don't throw out all constraints. . . . So what that did, that was the cause of the housing bubble." - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

WI - Johnson vs Feingold part 2

After stumbling a bit in his first ever political debate last Friday, GOP Senate hopeful Ron Johnson put in an impressive performance tonight. It was a stunning improvement actually. He was energetic without seeming anxious, very well-prepared and deliberate in his speech — he looked like a politician ready to go to Washington. Sen. Feingold stuck to his guns and once again proved himself an experienced debater, even if most Wisconsin voters have long soured on the substance of his message. The debate had a more open format and this played to Johnson’s advantage. That is, he didn’t try to rush his answers and made his points clearly and concisely during the follow ups to the initial questions.

Perhaps the debate’s most compelling exchanges centered on freedom of expression. When Johnson asked Feingold why he did not vote to condemn MoveOn.org’s “General Betray Us” ad, Feingold cried “free speech,” arguing that the Senate has better things to do than pass meaningless resolutions. Several minutes later, Feingold — echoing a tactic that many embattled Democrats are using lately — accused Johnson of benefiting from the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, what Feingold called “one of the worst decisions in the history” of the court. He called on Johnson to ask third party groups spending on his behalf to stop. Johnson, referencing Feingold’s earlier defense (and drawing laughter), claimed that these groups also “have a right to free speech.” This turned into a bit of a testy back-and-forth with neither candidate backing down. Johnson missed a golden opportunity, however, to point out the almost $600,000 that MoveOn.org has recently raised on Feingold’s behalf, and to ask him if they should stop their activity as well. Count on hearing about it in the next debate.

Johnson scored big on a counter to one of Feingold’s standard lamentations — ‘woe is me, the lonely independent voice in a Congress of partisans,’ etc. — by bringing up Feingold’s (decisive) votes on the stimulus package and health-care reform, two highly partisan efforts. Feingold responded that the stimulus wasn’t partisan because the two Maine Republicans voted for it, and this seemed to cause a bit of a commotion in the crowd and considerable laughter, as Johnson fittingly threw a look of disbelief in Feingold’s direction. This was an absolute low point for Feingold and exposed his biggest weak point. He looked more than ever like a vulnerable incumbent fighting a losing battle. - NRO Story

Obama Pushes for Funds for Infrastructure - Wasn't that what the Stimulus was for?

In a speech in the White House Rose Garden this morning, President Obama pushed for bipartisan support of increased funding for transportation initiatives, and emphasized that a "fundamental overhaul" of the country's "woefully inefficient" transit system was necessary to reduce unemployment and remain competitive on an international level.

The president, speaking alongside former Secretaries of Transportation Samuel Skinner and Norman Mineta and Secretary of Treasury Timonthy Geithner, said that the six-year initiative - which has been pegged at approximately $50 billion - would not only repair and modernize U.S. roads, rails, and air systems, but also provide much-needed work opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

"We can no longer afford to sit still," Mr. Obama said, pointing out that the average American pays twice as much annually on transportation as on food. - CBS News Story

Wasn't that what the Stimulus was to do? I thought that we were going to use a lot of those funds to get shovel ready projects going. It was suppose to help the economy and fix the infrastructure in one swoop. Guess that didn't work. Why not throw more money at something that's not working? That sounds like a great idea. Then we can put more money into it when that doesn't work.

Democrats & Liberals Attacking Businesses over Campaign Donations

f at first you don't succeed, get some friends in high places to shut your opponents up. That's the latest Washington power play, as Democrats and liberals attack the Chamber of Commerce and independent spending groups in an attempt to stop businesses from participating in politics.

Since the Supreme Court's January decision in Citizens United v. FEC, Democrats in Congress have been trying to pass legislation to repeal the First Amendment for business, though not for unions. Having failed on that score, they're now turning to legal and political threats. Funny how all of this outrage never surfaced when the likes of Peter Lewis of Progressive insurance and George Soros helped to make Democrats financially dominant in 2006 and 2008.

Chairman Max Baucus of the powerful Senate Finance Committee got the threats going last month when he asked Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman to investigate if certain tax exempt 501(c) groups had violated the law by engaging in too much political campaign activity. Lest there be any confusion about his targets, the Montana Democrat flagged articles focused on GOP-leaning groups, including Americans for Job Security and American Crossroads.

Mr. Baucus was seconded last week by the ostensibly nonpartisan campaign reform groups Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, which asked the IRS to investigate whether Crossroads is spending too much money on campaigns. Those two outfits swallowed their referee whistle in the last two campaign cycles, but they're all worked up now that Republicans might win more seats. Crossroads GPS, a 501(c)(4) affiliate of American Crossroads supported by Karl Rove, is a target because it has spent millions already in this election cycle.

Last Tuesday, the liberal blog ThinkProgress, run by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had collected some $300,000 in annual dues from foreign companies. Since the money went into the Chamber's general fund, the allegation is that it could have been used to pay for political ads, which would violate a ban on foreign companies participating in American elections. The Chamber says it uses no foreign money for its political activities and goes to great lengths to raise separate funds for political purposes.

That didn't stop President Obama from raising the issue in a Maryland speech last week, saying that "groups that receive foreign money are spending huge sums to influence American elections." Within hours of the ThinkProgress report, the bully boys at MoveOn.org asked the Department of Justice to launch a criminal investigation of the Chamber. In a letter to the Federal Election Commission, Minnesota Senator Al Franken expressed his profound concern that "foreign corporations are indirectly spending significant sums to influence American elections through third-party groups." From the man who stole his Senate election in a dubious recount, this is rich. - WSJ Story

Tom Barrett Ad False and Misleading

Stem cells hold the potential to treat, and even cure, some of our most deadly and debilitating illnesses, including heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s and diabetes. To make the cells do their magic, research is needed — and the University of Wisconsin has been at the forefront of that work.

But for many people, there is a tension between conducting such research and protecting the sanctity of human life. The dilemma confronts not only scientists, but politicians, who are able to set government funding priorities and even place limits on the work scientists do.

As in 2006, stem cell research has become an issue in the race for governor.
Just as outgoing Gov, Jim Doyle did four years ago, Democratic nominee Tom Barrett is running a TV ad that paints his Republican opponent — Scott Walker — as extreme on the issue.

The ad features a mother talking to the camera about her son, who has juvenile diabetes. She describes how stem cell research "gives our family hope, hope for a cure," and she continues with a blunt declaration:

"Scott Walker says he would ban stem cell research in Wisconsin. That’s right, ban it."

It is the mother making the statement. But as the candidate, Barrett is responsible for the content of the ad. Indeed, as the mother speaks, the words "Scott Walker says he would ban stem cell research" appear on the screen. - PolitiFact Wisconsin