James A. Chamblee, 12/02/1938 - 8/18/2005

Computer Scientist, Ferro-Cement Boat Builder.

Dad's Obituary James Anderson Chamblee, 66, a retired computer scientist who founded a company that built concrete sailboats, died Thursday, August 18, 2005 of heart disease at Howard County General Hospital in Columbia. He was a resident of Columbia and Jekyll Island, Ga. Mr. Chamblee was born in Wilmington, N.C. In 1959, he went to work for IBM in New York, where he was part of a team that helped pioneer the American Airlines reservation system and the automation of the New York Stock Exchange. Going to school at night, he received his undergraduate degree in math from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 1963. He moved to Savage in 1963 and joined the University of Maryland Computer Science Center, where he worked for a year. From 1964 to 1972, he was a computer scientist for the Federal Trade Commission and from 1972 to 1983 for the Environmental Protection Agency. He worked for the Army Department from 1983 until his retirement in 1994. He started building ferro-cement boats in 1972. Concrete hulls in the family's front yard, alongside Route 1 in Savage, became familiar sights to passersby. A 1972 Mother Earth News article that featured Mr. Chamblee's boatyard, Sampson Marine, noted that a concrete boat offered some advantages over conventionally constructed boats: "It won't rust or rot, sharp rocks don't punch holes in it and the vessel just keeps on getting stronger for the next 30 years or so!"  The article and photos of the boats in the yard, including a photo of Larry Chamblee as a law student working on his boat, is at http://www.motherearthnews.com/library/1972_July_August/How_To_Build_A_Ferrocement_Boat Mr. Chamblee designed the first concrete skipjack and wrote a book on the subject. He also captained two Atlantic Ocean voyages in his 45-foot concrete ketch in the late 1970s, sailing from Baltimore to Portugal via the Azores on the voyage over and from northern Africa via Puerto Rico on the way back. His children were among the crew. When the state bought his home and business property in Savage, MD for Route 32, he built the home in Clarksville, MD that his family moved into in 1975 until it was sold about 25 years later. In recent years, he had worked as a golf course marshal on Jekyll Island, where he spent winters. Survivors include his wife of 46 years, Eileen Wandell Chamblee of Columbia; four children, James Chamblee of Frederick, Jeffrey Chamblee of Columbia, Andrea Chamblee of Silver Spring and Cynthia Chamblee of Eldersburg, Md.; two brothers; and three grandchildren. James and Eileen Chamblee Dad with his Cement ketch, Chosen One

Who is behind those political ads? Find out with a NEW APP!

Who is behind these ads by "Citizens for" our citizens and their growth, progress, freedom, and liberties?  and why are they saying such mean things?

The sponsors of the attack ads are as few as five - and up to less than 200 - billionaires.  These PACs are their financial playgrounds. Their "free speech" is not only costing billions of dollars, but tens of thousands of votes, and the voices of millions of citizens.
UPDATE: Sunlight Foundation has a new App  -- ADHAWK where you can hold your phone up to the ad and it will tell you whose paying - if it's not secret.  http://adhawk.sunlightfoundation.com/

Read about the project here:  http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/outside-spending/super-pacs/

Who are the SuperPacs:

     Open Secrets report

     New York magazine article

Top Groups, Excluding Party Committees, 2012

Organization	Total	View*	Independent Expenditures	Elec Comm	Comm Costs	Super PAC	527s†	501c
Restore Our Future  (Sheldon Adelson, Bain Capital)	$53,878,098	C	$53,878,098	$0	$0	x
Winning Our Future  (Sheldon Adelson)	$17,002,762	C	$17,002,762	$0	$0	x
Priorities USA Action  (Dreamworks)	$16,087,987	L	$16,087,987	$0	$0	x
American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS  (Karl Rove)	$12,442,024	C	$12,155,247	$286,777	$0	x		x
Club for Growth (Grover Norquist)	$10,999,826	C	$10,999,826	$0	$0	x		x
VIEW ALL GROUPS

Next on the list is the US Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber is not a US agency. It is private, and increasingly controlled by foreign money, especially from China.  The Chamber refuses to disclose how much of its support comes from foreign sources.  It is spending millions on ads targeting Democrats.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Chamber_of_Commerce#Electoral_activities  http://www.iwatchnews.org/2012/07/27/10352/daily-disclosure-us-chamber-drops-59-million-ad-blitz

The Center for Consumer Freedom is starting to rise again, running ads against the Humane Society. CFF was begun in 1995 by a tobacco company to discredit public health organizations like the Centers for Disease Control, and their supporters.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Consumer_Freedom.

A huge percentage of PAC money -- 25% -- comes from just five rich white male donors. 

Harold Simmons is the Dallas industrialist who financed the ads “Swiftboating” John Kerry.  He is the top donor to conservative SuperPacs.

Sheldon Adelson is the Las Vegas casino mogul  who gave $10 million to Winning Our Future, a super PAC aiding former House speaker Newt Gingrich.

Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and co-founder of PayPal, donated $2.6 million to Endorse Liberty, a super PAC helping Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Thiel, a hard-partying libertarian, gave $70,000 to a 2010 ballot initiative in California legalizing marijuana.

Bob Perry is a Houston home builder who donated $3.6 million to super PACs since Jan. 1, 2011, including $2.5 million to American Crossroads.  He has supported Texas Gov. Rick Perry and state PACs backing former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty in the past, but he shifted last year to a pro-Romney super PAC with a $1 million donation.

No Democratic donors rank as high as the top donors to Republican super PACs.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-02-21/super-pac-donors/53196658/1

What about the other 75 of PAC donors%?  196 People Control 80 Percent of Super PAC Money

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/07/27/196-people-control-80-percent-of-super-pac-money-who-are-they

New York magazine article

The false link between FDA and Monsanto: consumers and progressives should support Michael Taylor

If you belong to any progressive mailing lists, chances are you’ve recently been urged to sign a petition calling for the removal of Michael Taylor as head of food safety at the Food and Drug Administration.

Food activists and consumer groups take issue with the fact that the former chief lobbyist for Monsanto, the dominant maker of genetically modified seeds and pesticides, oversees the nation’s food safety. Here’s a bit on the recent GMO kerfuffle.

“Michael Taylor is a devoted public official and I thought it was outrageous that he was being attacked in this mindless petition, “ said Michael Jacobson, the executive director of the CSPI, an organization normally known for holding government and industry feet to the fire.

Here is the Chicago Tribune article:

The open letter signed by the pro-consumer activists is here (pdf).

Rev Martin Luther King Jr: I've Been to the Mountain Top for collective bargaining rights

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered this speech in support of the striking government employees (sanitation workers) at Mason Temple in Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968 — the day before he was assassinated.

He was there to lend his support to sanitation workers who were on strike, protesting terrible working conditions and low wages. Taylor Rogers and Elmore Nickelberry were among the 1,300 who walked off the job in 1968.

Rogers remembers picking up tubs of garbage that were full of holes. "That garbage would leak all over you," he says. By the time he got home, his clothes were dirty and full of maggots that had fallen on him.

"I had maggots run down in my shirts, and then maggots would go down in my shoes," Nickelberry says. "And we worked in the rain — snow, ice and rain. We had to. If we didn't, we'd lose our job. They said, 'A garbage man wasn't nothing.'"

Rogers says, "It was awful." One day, two workers, who had gone into a trash compactor to escape the rain, were crushed to death. "Sometimes you cry," Nickelberry says.

"Sometimes you get mad and get up in the morning and ... say, 'I ain't going to work.' ... I had to work because that's the only way I could feed my family."

'All We Wanted Was Some Dignity'

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89361277

See also: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/memphis-v-mlk/

http://www.afscme.org/about/1029.cfm

The 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fires

The meeting room walls in the Dept of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health are lined with poster-sized photographs of people who died at work.

These public servants, who have no budget yet for this year and are operating under a continuing resolution from a dysfunctional Congress, are used as punching bags by a workforce which it has made to be one of the safest in the world; that is, when OSHA is allowed to police profiteers who use immigrants as disposable labor.

OSHA wall posters now can include the workers who were kidnapped, locked in, and sexually assaulted at the DeCoster egg farms over the past 25 years.

WaPo's Howard Meyerson discusses the horrific tragedy of the Triangle fires:

The seamstresses were just getting off work that Saturday, some of them singing a new popular song, “Every Little Movement (Has a Meaning of Its Own),” when they heard shouts from the eighth floor just below. They saw smoke outside the windows, and then fire. As David Von Drehle recounts the ensuing catastrophe, in his award-winning book “Triangle,” just a couple minutes later the ninth floor was fully ablaze.

* * * *

[M]any, facing the choice of death by fire or death by impact on the city streets, chose the latter and leapt. Down they came, some already engulfed in flame — first a few, then a torrent, before the horrified crowd that had gathered by the building, which was just off Washington Square in the heart of New York’s Greenwich Village.

When it was over, 146 people had either died by fire or jumped to their deaths. Most were young women, almost entirely Jewish or Italian immigrants, many still in their teens, one just 14.

Every little movement has a meaning of its own,
Every thought and feeling by some posture can be shown,
And every lovelight that comes a stealing
All your dreams must be revealing
All its sweetness in some appealing little gesture
All of its own.

Vote early (and often)!

Your vote has a bigger impact in local and midterm elections. There are lots of important issues that affect your daily life. Don't wait for 2012!


Registration information here. Most states require you to register in October for November elections. Check your state's rules here.


Get your absentee ballot - information here.

'

Early voting in Maryland - information

I found it really disappointing that the County is doing such a lousy job getting out information about early voting. The latest Paperless Airplane covers voter registration, which expired in August, not the ongoing primary. Primary voting information is not an option on the menu at 240-777-8683 (VOTE), although you have to take the extra time to listen to them assure you that the options are updated often so you should wait and listen to them all each time (press 0).
It's not on the website for the Silver Spring Center, one of five early voting spots: http://www.silverspringcenter.com/voter.htm

Thank goodness I got the call from My Representative Chris Van Hollen telling me about it.

Here is the top-sectret brochure. http://www.elections.state.md.us/documents/Final_English_Spanish%20Brochure.pdf

Even the Washington Post is not helping, hiding it under the cute but hard to find headline, "early bird specials." Here is the story. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090305866.html

The hours are 10am-8pm

If you care about the Chesapeake Bay, vote for Roger Manno. If you care about honesty and integrity, vote for Martin OMalley, not Robert Ehrlich.

Census 2010: We can't move forward till you send it back

No cities in Maryland make the top 50 of census returns.

That means when it's time to decide how many representatives on Congress, how much federal money for metro, how many pothole fills, how many school lunches, Maryland may not get its fair share.

Currently, Virginia and Pennsylvania have slightly better return rates. C'mon Maryland! Return your census!

Ever wanted a quick explanation of how health reform will benefit Maryland to share with friends and family?

Last year, more than 700,000 Marylanders lost their homes to foreclosure when health bills bankrupted them. Insurance companies did that to Marylanders.

See what health reform does for Marylanders here.

Insurance pays for gun owners

Gun owners increase their risk for injury and expense when they injure themselves and their families. No evidence indicates that it increases safety. Not only that, but more often than not, they don't have the money to pay for their health care from the injury! Government health care and your insurance premiums finance their carelessness. Ironic that self-declared libertarians depend on the welfare of government.

According to Medical experts:

Many people feel that having a gun provides greater safety for them and their family. Actually, having a firearm in the home escalates the risk for death or injury, while using it to shoot someone who endangers the household is much less common. The resultant injuries, deaths, emotional turmoil, and/or disabilities lead to greater utilization of health care and legal/police services. Payment for these expenses is provided by higher insurance premiums and tax rates. This financial aspect has become a part of our country's current political concern over firearm ownership rights, gun violence or regulation, health care costs, the economy, and taxes....

The article lists mind-numbing numbers of injuries and deaths caused by guns. Of course, gun rights advocates don;t bother to contest these numbers. They argue instead that it is a cost of having the right to "a well-regulated militia" a need which they offer to meet with unregulated, untrained, unregistered or liscenced citizen soldiers regardless of whether they can hit a target the size of a barn.

Taxpayers often bear a large percentage of these financial burdens; thus this matter is a hot political topic nationally. In Kentucky in 2008, 73% of gunshot victims were uninsured, 10% were covered by governmental plans, and 17% were insured.[18] Nationally, data reported in 2001 documented that government programs pay for about 49% of this amount, 18% is covered by private insurance, and 33% by all other sources.[19] Past medical bills are reflected in future insurance rates.[2]
Gun violence costs about 2.4 billion dollars annually to the criminal justice system in America, which is almost equal to all other crimes put together.[19] Each homicide results in approximately $244,000 of incarceration expenses for our taxpayers. Indirect costs are high as well; for example, local governments across our country spend up to $100 million each year just on bulletproof vests.[19] Most of these bills are then passed on to the taxpayers.

Guns, purchased for protection, paradoxically result in increased rates of injury or death to the owners and their families. Since firearm possession is related to a high occurrence of domestic violence, restriction of access is sometimes suggested as a prevention policy. That, however, remains politically sensitive despite public wishes to reduce the costs of medical care and insurance. Availability tends to increase crime rates and the presence of these dangerous weapons escalates rates of both morbidity and mortality. Shootings are often precipitated during the commission of other crimes.[9] Clearly, guns are easily available to the at-risk population; yet gun control remains generally unpopular. Firearm possession does not appear to yield safety. Documentation evidences that the presence of guns and injuries are correlated,[17] and are thus related to medical attention and disability costs.

Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute

King's next project, after public accomodations and voting rights, was going to be economic equality. His work remains unfinished.

Read his speeches and realize you can replace his descriptions of fairness and aspirations to any marginalized groups: immigrants, gays and poor.

Here is a speech given in response to King's death by Bobby Kennedy in Indianapolis, Indiana: a city that responded with NO riots. Listen to it in Kennedy's own voice here.

_________________________

Ladies and Gentlemen - I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because...

I have some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.

For those of you who are black - considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible - you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization - black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

(Interrupted by applause)

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, yeah that's true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love - a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

(Interrupted by applause)

Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.

Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much. (Applause)

Robert F. Kennedy - April 4, 1968

Just two months later, Robert Kennedy was gunned down during a celebration following his victory in the California primary, June 5, 1968.

Breast Cancer screening: is it health care rationing?

Breast cancer screening has risks - risks of exposure to unnecessary procedures like biopsies, that have risks of their own. When healthy women get biopsied and the biopsy goes wrong - produces infection and scarring, for example - the risks outweigh the benefits. That is why asymptomatic healthy women with no risk factors for cancer who are under 50 might not need screening. Women who have family risks or notice a symptom should get screened regardless of age. That is ALL that Bush's panel on breast cancer screening said. Here it is from the professionals:

The American College of Physicians (ACP), representing 129,000 internal medicine physicians and medical student members, believes that it is essential that research on the effectiveness and comparative effectiveness of different medical treatments not be influenced by political considerations.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations on mammography, which were published in ACP's flagship journal, the Annals of Internal Medicine, have regrettably been used by some critics of the health reform bills being considered by Congress to make baseless charges that the bills would lead to rationing of care. Other critics have made unfair and unsubstantiated attacks on the expertise, motivations, and independence of the scientists and clinician experts on the USPSTF.

ACP believes that it is essential that clinicians and patients be able to make their own decisions on diagnosis and treatment informed by the best available scientific evidence on the effectiveness of different treatments and diagnostic interventions. The USPSTF is a highly regarded, credible and independent group of experts that performs this role, on a purely advisory basis, to the Department of Health and Human Services, as it relates to interventions to prevent or detect diseases. As is often the case with evidence-based reviews, the USPTF's recommendations will not always be consistent with the guidelines established by other experts in the field, by professional medical societies, and by patient advocacy groups. Such differences of opinion, expressed in a constructive and transparent manner so that patients and their clinicians can make their own best judgment, are important and welcome. It is not constructive to make ill-founded attacks on the integrity, credibility, motivations, and expertise of the clinicians and scientists on the USPSTF.

Some critics have erroneously charged that the USPSTF's recommendations were motivated by a desire to control costs. According to the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, "the USPSTF does not consider economic costs in making recommendations." The Agency continues, "it realizes that these costs are important in the decision to implement preventive services. Thus, in situations where there is likely to be some effectiveness of the service, the Task Force searches for evidence of the costs and cost-effectiveness of implementation, presenting this information separately from its recommendation" and the "recommendations are not modified to accommodate concerns about insurance coverage of preventive services, medicolegal liability, or legislation, but users of the recommendations may need to do so."

Under the bills being considered by Congress, the USPSTF will have an important role in making evidence-based recommendations on preventive services that insurers will be required to cover, but the bills do not give the Task Force - or the federal government itself - any authority to put limitations on coverage, ration care, or require that insurers deny coverage. Specifically, the House and Senate bills would require health plans to cover preventive services based in large part on the evidence-based reviews by the USPSTF, but no limits are placed on health plans' ability to offer additional preventive benefits, or in considering advice from sources other than the USPSTF in making such coverage determinations. Accordingly, patients will benefit by having a floor - not a limit - on essential preventive services that would be covered by all health insurers, usually with no out-of-pocket cost to them. Patients will also benefit from having independent research on the comparative effectiveness of different treatments, as proposed in the bills before Congress. The bills specifically prohibit use of comparative effectiveness research to limit coverage or deny care based on cost.

The controversy over the mammography guidelines illustrates the importance of communicating information on evidence-based reviews to the public in a way that facilitates an understanding of how such reviews are conducted and how they are intended to support, not supplant, individual decision-making by patients and their clinicians.

ACP urges Congress, the administration, and patient and physician advocacy groups to respect and support the importance of protecting evidence-based research by respected scientists and clinicians from being used to score political points that do not serve the public's interest.

Source: David Kinsman
American College of Physicians

Healthcare around the world

T.R. Reid explains healthcare in five capitalist economies.



PBS Frontline Sick Around the World by TR Reid.



In Sick Around the World, FRONTLINE teams up with veteran Washington Post foreign correspondent T.R. Reid to find out how five other capitalist democracies -- the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Taiwan and Switzerland -- deliver health care, and what the United States might learn from their successes and their failures. (more »)

Obama in Silver Spring!

Obama makes an unannounced visit today to Viers Mill Elementary School.
Right wing wackos commenting on WaPo hope the diverse group of little children don't grow up to VOTE!

“VAULT” holds Terps football history

From UMd Terp magazine (Fall 2009):

A new book by a Maryland alumnus, sportswriter and devoted Terps football fan chronicles the team’s history, from the first game in 1892 to its successes under coach Ralph Friedgen today.
John McNamara ’83 uses words, historic photos and replicas of rare memorabilia to create a vivid scrapbook of sorts titled “The University of Maryland Football Vault: The History of the Terrapins.”

“The book was a very personal undertaking,” says McNamara, who covers the Terps at The Capital newspaper in Annapolis. “I have followed Maryland football—first as a fan, then as a journalist—for the last 35 years. Many of the players mentioned were people I watched, interviewed and got to know. I even met my wife, also a Maryland journalism student at the time, after a Maryland-North Carolina football game in 1981.”

He combines stories about legends including Harry C. “Curley” Byrd 1908, Jack Scarbath ’54, Jerry Claiborne, Boomer Esiason ’84 and E.J. Henderson ’02 with materials drawn from Maryland’s athletics department and archives. Johnny Holliday, longtime radio play-byplay announcer, wrote the foreword and Friedgen provided the afterword. -LB

Parade of Liars selling junk: health care, tobacco, and auto billionaires

They get rich making junk cars, junk bonds and junk insurance policies

On April 14, 1994, the executives of America's seven largest tobacco companies came before Congress and each testified that tobacco was not addictive.

On November 18, 2008, auto executives flew to Washington on private jets to testify that they needed taxpayer bailouts. “We’re all slashing back” on non-essential expenses, they said, promising, “We’re going to be dramatically leaner.”

May 30, 1996 Linda Peeno testified that third party payors/insurance companies pay hugh bonuses to people who, without ever seeing a patient, deny the coverage for the care that saves their lives and allows them to keep their homes. You know, the reason why we buy health insurance in the first place.



In the 1960s, stories of elderly people being forced from their homes and eating cans of dog food were not unusual. Now the elderly are safe from that fate. It's time to give the same safety to school children and younger adults. Marcia Angell, editor of NEJM agrees we need Medicare for all.

Public Option: your premium goes to salaries and golden parachutes.

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

Jesus was a public option

Jesus apparently took some convincing that he should cast his pearls before swine, or in this case, his bread to the dogs, to make health care accessible.

“But Lord,” said the lowly Canaanite woman. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Jesus was pleased by her understanding. “Woman, you have great faith!” he said, astonishing the disciples. The disciples watched closely, and would later record this triumphant moment in the Holy Book. The Canaanites were the “dogs” of Israel, but this one—this “dog,” a far cry from one of the chosen—had great faith? Jesus told the woman that her request had been granted. And indeed from that very hour, the woman’s daughter was freed of her demon.

Likewise among the lepers, the outcast Samaritan - the immigrant - proved worthy of health care. Luke 17:11-19:

Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."

Jesus raised the dead and cured the sick, and took care of outcasts from outside his church and immediate community. How did the established interests respond? With a death sentence, which is probably a pre-existing condition.

Insurance company profiteers make US sick

Obama at College Park on Health care reform.

FDA Commissioner: Six new compliance initiatives

FDA Commissioner Hamburg today:

Compliant industry should support these intitatives that will prevent them from being undercut by firms taking illegal shortcuts:

• 15 days for FDA to issue Warning Letters. Warning letters will no longer be held waiting for firms to respond.


• No GC reviews unless the case presents a novel legal issue. The Bush adminsitration policy of having letters reviewed by anti-consumer activitists planted in the Agency offices is cancelled.


• State coordination where state law allows rapid response to seize products and correct issues.


• A Warning Letter or recall will trigger enforcement follow up. Cases will no longer be allowed to languish or remain open with incertain resolution. Firms will get a knock on the door and an inspection.


• No multiple warning letters. The second Warning Letter to a firm will trigger increased scrutiny and follow up actions.


• After Warning Letter is satisfactorily resolved, firms may be eligible for a "close out letter" to document the matetrs have been resolved, e.g., after an FDA inspection.

Also she mentioned FDA has asked for additional power to mandatory food recalls.

The full text of the speech will be available immediately following the event here.

A video recording of the speech will be available after 4:00 this afternoon here.