Health Care in America - Big Pharma Fraud, Cover Ups & Corruption

The Broken American Health Care System - CPT Reprint

There are no short cuts to the truth, and especially when it comes to the cutthroat world of big pharma and big bucks.  In this article we take a story that appeared in The Hals Report by Erik Hals.  It is another example of the extent big pharma is willing to go to secure business in the ruthless legal drug addiction market in America.

The Hals Report

Fraud, Cover-Ups, and Corruption: Welcome to the Drug Industry

Erik Hals,  January 6, 2011

The United States health care industry is one of the largest in the world, with over 300 billion dollars spent on prescription drugs per year. (1) For many, these drugs have brought undeniable benefits, but in recent months the health care industry has fallen upon scandal after scandal.


Recently, two of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies were fined billions of dollars after investigations into their secret working practices brought several fraudulent activities to light. Now, new revelations have emerged including pervasive fraud, corruption and huge kickbacks which were paid to doctors.


So, what do doctors receive kickbacks for and how do they work? We will begin with a man named David. A decade ago David was prescribed Risperdal for a psychiatric illness, a drug made by Johnson and Johnson. U.S. authorities never approved Risperdal for treating his disorder but the doctor prescribed it to him anyway, it had devastating consequences. He is now in a wheelchair with diabetes and Parkinson’s. In a current lawsuit against Johnson and Johnson, he blames Risperdal. (2)


The pharmaceutical companies didn’t trick the government though. U.S. regulators ruled Johnson and Johnson misled doctors about potential fatal risks associated with the drug, including diabetes. (3) There are more than 2,000 people bringing legal actions against Johnson and Johnson. The company claims the actions are without merit. (of course they do!) The U.S. government and several states are also suing the company in related cases.


Surprisingly, most of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the United States have been fined for fraud in the past. One of the most common types of fraud in the pharmaceutical world is known as off-label marketing. Off-label marketing is a technique in which pharmaceutical companies advise doctors to prescribe drugs for unapproved uses. This is known as fraud against the government because medicare ends up paying the expense for the drugs if they do not work.


Sharon Ornsby, a member of the FBI financial crimes unit, in an interview on Al Jazeera television said, “pharmaceutical fraud is one of our top three threats.”


The U.S. government is slowly beginning to show a fighting facade, but is that all it really is, a facade? In the last 2 years alone the U.S. government has fined six of Americas top ten pharmaceutical companies for fraud. Ongoing investigations continue against three of the four remaining companies. During this specific period in time the industry has paid out over five billion dollars in fines.

In September of 2009 Pfizer settled civil and criminal charges in the amount of 2.3 billion dollars with the federal government for illegally marketing four types of drugs. (4) The Pfizer corporation made over 180 billion dollars selling twelve twelve kinds of drugs and only paid 2.3 billion dollars in fines, talk about a phenomenal business plan!


Details of Pfizer’s behavior came to light when several insiders decided to become whistleblowers. Glen Demott was a top Pfizer representative selling the drug Bextra while earning 100,000 dollars per year. He claims he was trained to lie to physicians, “they were training us to say things to physicians that weren’t accurate. Bextra was not approved to be used for acute pain and we were out there trying to get standing orders for acute pain.” Eventually, Demott was forced out of his position with Pfizer. (5)


Demott is one of a growing number of whistleblowers exposing medical corruption across America. This is largely thanks to a U.S. law called Qui Tam. The law allows individuals with knowledge concerning fraud against the government to bring a legal case on its behalf and share in the proceeds.


Lewis Morris is chief lawyer for the U.S. health department and increasingly uses Qui Tam to expose drug industry corruption. Today there are over 1000 outstanding Qui Tam cases in the United States and they are slowly beginning to open up the secretive world of big pharma. For the first time, we can see millions of dollars in payments to doctors throughout the U.S.


Drug companies now publish physician payment figures online and in 2009 just a few companies paid doctors in the United States over 200 million dollars. (6) These giant sums of money pouring into the medical field will inevitably lead to corruption on every level of the pharmaceutical industry. (if it hasn’t already?)


We already know Risperdal can cause diabetes and Parkinson’s as we saw in Davids case, but now there is evidence the drug can cause serious complications in adolescent boys as well. (Gynecomastia: breast development.) (7) As we speak, federal investigators are still looking into claims concerning Johnson and Johnson. They believe the company illegally marketed Risperdal for use in children, including those with ADHD. But with so many drug scandals flooding the news, the countries regulators have begun to run low on resources.

Avandia used to be the worlds best selling diabetes drug for years. It earned its maker Glaxo Smith Kline billions of dollars, but now it is linked to over 100,000 heart attacks in the United States.


In July the U.S. food and drug administration held hearings related to the dangers of Avandia. (It’s license has already been suspended in Saudi Arabia) An investigation by the U.S. senate finance committee found the totality of evidence suggests Glaxo Smith Kline was aware of the possible cardiac risks associated with Avandia years before the evidence became public. (8) Glaxo Smith Kline also tried to prevent heart attack warnings from being printed on their products box.


Many of Americas leading pharmaceutical corporations appear distraught and amass in corruption. Will fines alone prevent this?


The U.S. government is continually reaching for stronger powers and controls over the industry. The department of health is even considering breaking up drug companies found guilty of corrupt and unethical practices. In the meantime, 1000′s of doctors continue to take cash payments from the drug industry and would argue they are doing nothing wrong. This deeply entrenched culture of corruption within the drug industry is a serious problem that will inevitably cripple our healthcare system beyond repair if something isn’t done about it . Say NO to big pharma.


Sources:


1. Reuters: prescription drug sales 300b$
2. Health Freedom Alliance
3. J&J Told to Pay $257.7 Million Over Risperdal Marketing Tactics
4. Pfizer pays a record $2.3 billion to settle criminal charges
5. Whistleblower Glen DeMott on False Claims Act Settlement Reached
6. PFIZER INC Officers & Directors
7. RISPERDAL
8. Avandia Maker Hid Risks for Years, Probe Finds

© The Hals Report 2012. All rights reserved.

http://www.thehalsreport.com/

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Health Care in America - Big Pharma Convictions in Civil and Criminal Courts - 1st Published 3/6/2012

The Broken American Health Care System

In this article we update you on the convictions of the pharmaceutical companies in various criminal and civil actions against them.  Are there the type of people we want dictating our health care needs and options?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

A nearly decade-long civil investigation into the fraudulent marketing of Johnson & Johnson's antipsychotic drug Risperdal may soon be coming to a close, with the drug giant agreeing to pay more than $1 billion to the United States and individual states to resolve the matter.

Negotiations over a criminal plea are still ongoing, and individual states may choose to pursue their own cases rather than join in to the federal government's settlement.

This means J&J may be liable for far more money… considering the state of Texas alone is asking for more than $1 billion over Risperdal marketing.

In most cases, a billion-dollar (or more) fraud settlement would be a death-sentence for a business, but for the drug industry, it's just another cost of doing business.

J&J Markets Drug for Unapproved Uses to Boost Profits at the Expense of Patients' Health

At the heart of the latest settlement is J&J's, and particularly their Janssen unit's, attempt to market Risperdal for bipolar disorder, dementia, mood and anxiety disorders, when it had only been approved, initially, for psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.

Of course, only so many people have schizophrenia, so marketing the drug for the slew of conditions noted above boosted their customer base tremendously. Never mind that it wasn't approved for those conditions .

J&J's Janssen sent out an army of salespeople to doctor's offices, nursing homes, Veteran's Administration facilities, and jails to tout Risperdal as a proverbial miracle drug for mental illness and dementia. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told the company to stop the false and misleading marketing claims not once, not twice, but three times from 1994-2004, but the company reportedly continued to include marketing the drug for unapproved uses right in their business plan. In the years to follow, the FDA did eventually approve Risperdal for bipolar disorder and autism symptoms, but it was never approved for dementia (even though it was heavily marketed as a dementia drug).

In 2006, research showed that up to two-thirds of prescriptions for Risperdal were for unapproved uses that had little or no scientific support. Worse yet, elderly dementia patients who were prescribed Risperdal for off-label uses were found to increase their chances of death by 54 percent within the first 12 weeks of taking it!

Other research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found Risperdal is no more effective than a placebo, and is associated with a long list of potentially devastating side effects.

The study included 123 veterans with PTSD who received Risperdal, and another 124 who received a placebo. After six months of treatment, about 5 percent of the participants in both groups recovered, and between 10-20 percent in each group reported minor improvement. According to the lead author, Dr. John H. Krystal, who is also the director of the clinical neurosciences division of the Department of Veterans Affairs's National Center for  ' National Center for PTSD:

"We didn't find any suggestion that the drug treatment was having an overall benefit on their lives."

So it appears in many cases the joke is on the patient -- who takes a drug for no benefit, and is exposed to serious risks of side effects, some of which may be permanent.

And all the while, Johnson & Johnson is laughing all the way to the bank. More serious side effects include:

·              Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, which can be fatal
·              Hormone disruption (including breasts producing milk and breast development in males)
·              High blood sugar and diabetes

Drug Companies are the Top Thugs of the Medical World

Johnson & Johnson is no stranger to being slapped with billion-dollar lawsuits. You probably don't need to be reminded of all the recalls this company has had over the years with its pain products, specifically Motrin, Tylenol and Fentanyl (pain killer patches). The fact that Johnson & Johnson has paid out over $1 billion in the last few years in fines and judgments alone probably comes as no surprise either.

But did you know that in May 2011 the company pleaded guilty to illegally promoting its epilepsy drug Topamax for psychiatric purposes, and in so doing, settled a civil lawsuit in the case for $75 million? You probably didn't realize, either, that last January the U.S. Department of Justice accused Johnson & Johnson of paying tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks to Omnicare Inc to buy and recommend Johnson & Johnson drugs.

This latest scheme is the subject of a federal lawsuit that has 18 states suing not just Omnicare, but 14 other major drug companies, alleging that they ran this scheme together.

The bottom line is this: pharmaceutical companies – the same ones you trust to safely manufacture medications that could alter your very life – are the top corporate criminals on the planet, and this is not unique to only Johnson & Johnson. A large number of pharmaceutical companies are guilty of fraud, cover-ups of fatal side effects, and huge kickbacks paid to doctors.

Charges run the gamut from international price-setting, illegal marketing, false claims, hiding serious problems with their drugs and, in one case (Ortho, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson), obstruction of justice and eight counts of persuading employees to destroy documents in a federal investigation.

Yet toxic drugs designed, manufactured, and peddled by these top criminals are what the medical industry and government health agencies try to pass off as the "best" route to good health … despite the fact that pharmaceutical drugs, taken as prescribed, are also directly responsible for the death of at least 125,000 people annually, on top of everything else.

What Common, Illegal Drug Company Practice Earned the Most Penalties from the U.S. Government in the Last 20 Years?

Off-label drug promotion! By scouring through comprehensive databases of all major criminal and civil settlements between federal and state governments and pharmaceutical companies occurring between 1990 and 2010, the Public Citizen's Health Research Group made some sobering discoveries.

For example, they revealed the illegal practice that has earned the largest amount of financial penalties levied by the U.S. government:

"Of the 165 settlements comprising $19.8 billion in penalties during this 20-year interval, 73 percent of the settlements (121) and 75 percent of the penalties ($14.8 billion) have occurred in just the past five years (2006-2010).

… The practice of illegal off-label promotion of pharmaceuticals has been responsible for the largest amount of financial penalties levied by the federal government over the past 20 years. This practice can be prosecuted as a criminal offense because of the potential for serious adverse health effects in patients from such activities.

Deliberately overcharging state health programs, mainly Medicaid fraud, has been the most common violation against state governments and is responsible for the largest amount of financial penalties levied by these governments. This type of violation is also the main factor in the considerable increase in state settlements with pharmaceutical companies over time."

 What We Can Learn From How Doctors Choose to Die

What is perhaps most poignant of all of this is not the fact that corporations could be engaged in so much fraud and deception – it is the fact that so many have embraced the products of these deceptions as veritable life lines.

In the face of illness, we are taught, often from a young age, that pharmaceuticals are the answer. In reality, your own body has healing potential that is, in many cases, far superior to that offered by synthetic drugs, provided it is given the proper tools to harness its healing potential. Yet, those who are at the front lines – the doctors themselves – will often choose to forgo these "solutions" because, quite simply, they've seen the cycle before. Oftentimes, drugs only serve to create more problems – new symptoms and serious, sometimes deadly, side effects with little or no measurable benefit.

In fact, in the face of death, many doctors will choose to skip drugs and medical interventions entirely, choosing, instead, to die naturally. Ken Murray, MD, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at USC, said it well in a recent essay:

"It's not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don't die like the rest of us. What's unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

… To administer medical care that makes people suffer is anguishing. Physicians are trained to gather information without revealing any of their own feelings, but in private, among fellow doctors, they'll vent. "How can anyone do that to their family members?" they'll ask. I suspect it's one reason physicians have higher rates of alcohol abuse and depression than professionals in most other fields. I know it's one reason I stopped participating in hospital care for the last 10 years of my practice.

How has it come to this—that doctors administer so much care that they wouldn't want for themselves? The simple, or not-so-simple, answer is this: patients, doctors, and the system."

The truth is, you cannot trust that the companies making your medications have your best interest at heart. Their behavior is among the most criminal on the planet! The only way to avoid all risk, including death, from prescription drugs is to not take them at all. It is your body, not your doctor's and not your pharmacist's, so it is up to you to make the decision of what drugs to take, if any. Be SURE you are aware of the risks of any medication prescribed to you, and weigh them against any possible benefit. Then you can make a well-informed decision of whether it's a risk you're willing to take.

Of course, of paramount importance is also taking control of your health so you can stay well naturally, without the use of drugs or even frequent conventional medical care. If you adhere to a healthy lifestyle, you most likely will significantly reduce your need for medications in the first place.

Source: Bloomberg January 6, 2012

Source: Of Two Minds January 11, 2012
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Health Care in America - Increasing Criminal and Civil Monetary Penalties Against the Pharmaceutical Industry - 1st Published 3/6/2012

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The Broken American Health Care System

Rapidly Increasing Criminal and Civil Monetary Penalties Against the Pharmaceutical Industry: 1991 to 2010

Sammy Almashat, M.D., M.P.H, Charles Preston, M.D., M.P.H, Timothy Waterman, B.S., Sidney Wolfe, M.D.

Public Citizen’s Health Research

Group EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Background

U.S. spending on prescription drugs has increased from $40 billion in 1990 to$234 billion in 2008. In this era of rapidly rising drug costs, the illegal pharmaceutical company activities that have contributed to such inflated spending have garnered a significant amount of media attention. Recent billion-dollar settlements with two of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, provide evidence of the enormous scale of this wrong doing.  However, the total size, varied nature, and potential impact of these illegal and potentially dangerous activities have not been previously analyzed. This study examined trends from 1991 to the present in federal and state criminal and civil actions against pharmaceutical companies in order to address these questions.

Analysis

The purpose of this study was to compile a comprehensive database of all major criminal and civil settlements between federal and state governments and pharmaceutical companies. Press releases from both federal and state governments, in addition to existing online databases, were used to identify all settlements of at least $1 million during the past 20 years.

Main Findings

Of the 165 settlements comprising $19.8 billion in penalties during this 20-year interval, 73 percent of the settlements (121) and 75 percent of the penalties ($14.8 billion) have occurred in just the past five years (2006-2010).

Four companies (GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Schering-Plough) accounted for more than half (53 percent or $10.5 billion) of all financial penalties imposed over the past two decades. These leading violators were among the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

While the defense industry used to be the biggest defrauder of the federal  government under the False Claims Act (FCA), a law enacted in 1863 to prevent defense contractor fraud, the pharmaceutical industry has greatly overtaken the defense industry in recent years. The pharmaceutical industry now tops not only the defense industry, but all other industries in the total amount of fraud payments for actions against the federal government under the False Claims Act.

The practice of illegal off-label promotion of pharmaceuticals has been responsible for the largest amount of financial penalties levied by the federal government over the past 20 years. This practice can be prosecuted as a criminal offense because of the potential for serious adverse health effects in patients from such activities.

Deliberately overcharging state health programs, mainly Medicaid fraud, has been the most common violation against state governments and is responsible for the largest amount of financial penalties levied by these governments. This type of violation is also the main factor in the considerable increase in state settlements with pharmaceutical companies over time.

Former pharmaceutical company employees and other “whistleblowers " have been instrumental in bringing to light the most egregious violations and have been responsible for initiating the largest number of federal settlements over the past 10 years. From 1991 through 2000, qui tam (whistleblower) cases made up only 9 percent of payouts to the government, but from 2001 through 2010, they comprised 67 percent of total payouts.

Conclusion

Over the past two decades, especially during the past 10 years, there has been a marked increase in both the number of government settlements with pharmaceutical companies and the size of the accompanying financial penalties.  The reasons for these increases are likely related to a combination of increased violations by companies and increased enforcement on the part of federal and state governments.  The danger to public safety and the loss of state and federal dollars that comes with these violations require a more robust response than the government’s current practices. Given the relatively small size of current financial penalties when compared to the perpetrating companies’ profits, both increased financial penalties and appropriate criminal prosecution of company leadership may provide a more effective deterrent to unlawful behavior by the pharmaceutical industry.

Worst Offenders and Largest Settlements

Individual Companies: Total Penalties, 1991-2010

There are 20 pharmaceutical companies that paid a total of at least $100 million each in financial penalties over the past 20 years. The four worst offenders, with at least $1 billion in penalties each, were GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Schering-Plough. Together they accounted for more than half (53percent) of all financial penalties paid out by pharmaceutical companies.

Twenty Largest Settlements, 1991-2010

The 20 largest settlements over the past two decades follow. In the largest settlement of the past 20 years, GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay the federal government $3.4 billion in 2006 for failing to pay required taxes over a 17-year period.

The second and third largest settlements included the two largest criminal fines ever levied by the federal government against any company. In January 2009, Eli Lilly was forced to pay $515 million (the largest criminal fine ever received by a corporation at that time) and Pfizer, later that year, was fined$1.2 billion (the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the U.S.). Both companies were fined for illegal off-label promotion.

The majority (14) of the 20 largest settlements have occurred within the past five years (2006-2010), consistent with the dramatic increase in pharmaceutical industry financial penalties in recent years.  Of note, almost all cases (16 of 20) involved violations of the federal FCA, at least in part. Multiple blockbuster drugs (i.e., those with sales exceeding $1 billion per year), such as Neurontin (gabapentin), were involved in these settlements. For example, in the Pfizer case of 2004, the company was charged with illegal off-label promotion of Neurontin, a drug which in 2002 generated 94 percent of its $2.27-billion revenue from off-label use.

Table 2. Pharmaceutical Company Penalties: Worst Offenders

Company - Fine in millions of dollars - Percent of Total

GlaxoSmithKline                                     4501              22.7

Pfizer                                                            2935             14.8

Eli Lilly                                                        1712               8.6

Schering-Plough                                      1339               6.8

Bristol-Myers Squibb                             890                4.5

AstraZeneca                                               883                4.5

TAP Pharmaceutical Products            875                4.4

Merck                                                           806                4.1

Serono                                                          704                3.6

Purdue                                                         620                3.1

Allergan                                                      600                3.0

Novartis                                                       524                2.6

Cephalon                                                     425                 2.1

Johnson & Johnson                                353                 1.8

Forest Laboratories                                313                 1.6

Sanofi-aventis                                           310                 1.6

Bayer                                                            301                 1.5

Mylan                                                           267                 1.3

Teva                                                              181                 0.9

King Pharmaceuticals                          167                 0.8

Other                                                           595                 3.0

*Parent company names are current names without corporate (e.g. inc. or plc) designations. If company is non-existent now, name at time of most recent settlement was used.**Data for 2010 include only the first 10 months of the calendar year (through Nov. 1, 2010)***Percent of $19.813 billion in overall penalties. Percents do not add up to 100% as some cases were excluded due to inability to determine individual company share in settlement.

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Health Care Reform - When does it start? When does the hemorrhaging end?

Here in the United States we already pay far more per capita for health care than any other country in the world yet our health care system ranks far down the list in terms of quality of care.  Doesn't that seem odd to you?

For the past six years our political system has ground to a halt because of the partisan bickering between political parties over Obamacare.

And the many candidates running for the House and Senate in this year's midterm elections are all over the place in terms of whether they support Obamacare, want to fix Obamacare or want to dump Obamacare.

Obamacare is really called the Affordable Care Act and there is nothing affordable about it.  In terms of the health care industry, the cost of nothing has gone down but the premiums, profits, bonuses and kickbacks have sure gone up.

If we were really interested in hearing the truth the story would be a whole lot different. You see, Obamacare did nothing to fix the health care system, it only extended an already broken system to the millions of Americans who are uninsured.

The truth is far more brutal than worrying about the consequences of Obamacare.  The truth consists of the following:

Nothing is being done in Washington to improve the quality of health care service.

Nothing is being done in Washington to reduce the criminally high cost of health care.

Nothing is being done in Washington to stop the unnecessary and excessive amount of patient testing to determine the cause of health problems, many of which are never confirmed.

Nothing is being done in Washington to stop the millions of dollars in kickbacks to doctors for prescribing their drugs for patient treatment.

Nothing is being done in Washington to stop the corrupt influence of hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by the current health care system to legally bribe our politicians through campaign contributions.

Nothing is being done in Washington to stop the insurance companies from denying coverage for many types of health care treatment that could drastically lower the cost through alternative health techniques.

Nothing is being done in Washington to stop the FDA, our federal regulatory agency, from favoring applications for New Drug Approval from super rich pharmaceutical companies over a host of low cost and time proven techniques to improve health that are being kept off the American market.

Nothing is being done to stop the runaway cost of court litigation relating to medical malpractice and class action health cases.

In the meantime billions of dollars are being wasted every year paying for the nonsense we call health care.  If we need more proof of the incompetence of our health care providers and corrupt nature of our health care system just look at the Veterans Administration scandal that is just beginning to unfold.

The Obama Administration claims to have done more to reform the health care system than any president since George Washington (that is a joke), at least it wants to be given such credit, yet for six long years the very people Obama sent to war have been cheated, lied to, ignored and killed by the very same saviors of health care, the Obama administration.

What is the logic in that?  We can  reduce the cost of health care by killing off those who were sent to risk their lives fighting for our country?  America needs to wake up.  Our federal government, all of it, is under the control of the White House, not just the parts that seem to work.

If our federal government knew how to provide better health care then why did thousands of veterans get cheated for the past six years.  Thanks in large part to the health care and related industries Obama spent over $2 billion to get elected two times.

It seems to me the only health care insurance that works in America was the investment by the health care providers, big pharmaceutical corporations, Wall Street, big banks, the insurance industry, the trial lawyers and financial institutions of $2 billion in the Obama campaign because they are the only ones financially benefiting from the health care fraud and abuse sanctioned by the Obama Administration and Congress.

People have got to wake up, demand more from their elected officials, throw out those who protect the status quo and encourage those with no strings attached to find ways to make it work.  In short, people deserve a return on their investment in so called democracy and holding all those responsible for our broken system accountable is the first step.

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The thin blue line of thread that holds together the fabric of America, the protector of the people, buries latest martyr in NYC

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Saturday was a solemn yet amazing gathering of our nation's finest, the police, to bury the latest martyr who gave his life protecting the public.  NYC police officers Rafael Ramos and his partner Wenjian Liu were gunned down in NYC just one week ago today, the latest of the 114 police in America who died in the line of duly this year, 2014.

Over 25,000 fellow officers from all across America came to the funeral.  NYC has over 50,000 police officers.  JetBlue offered to fly officers from around the nation to NYC at no expense. 

After months of protests and violence regarding the deaths of two blacks in police shootouts, and the escalation of violence to looting, arson, and assaults on police that followed, two innocent police officers were murdered for doing nothing but wearing a police uniform in NYC.

What a strange irony.  Black protests erupt across the nation over the treatment of blacks by white police in two high profile shootings.  Arsonists and anarchists call for the murder of police in response.  Even politicians, the media and preachers fan the flames of racism for some inexplicable reason.

By all accounts, these were two wonderful men, loving parents, inspirational leaders, and spiritual counselors whose dedication, fairness, and actions were exemplary in every way possible.   

A black man murders two NYC cops doing nothing more than sitting in their car.  Then comes the irony, one was a Hispanic and the other was oriental.  So that is the result of fanning the fires of racism.

Crime statistics indicate over 95% of black murders were committed by other blacks.  The murder of a Hispanic and an Oriental seems a real stupid response to targeting white police officers.

Great strides were made in race relations since the 1950's and 1960's culminating with the election of Barack Obama six years ago.  It is a shame there are still people who exploit tragic events by turning peaceful protests into crime scenes.

If the so called experts would just shut up the people would continue to work out their differences without politicians and preachers.

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