Pamela Tapper Contributing reporter In 1896, Baron Pierre de Coupertin initiated the motto, Swifter, Higher, Stronger for the Olympics. In his vision of the modern Olympics, I don’t think he had performance enhancing drugs in mind.  Unfortunately some athletes have chosen to use performance enhancing drugs to become swifter, higher and stronger. When thinking of swifter we are reminded of a local favorite, track star, Marion Jones of Thousand Oaks, who won five medals at the 2000 Olympics, but was… Read more

At the first State party of the Obama Administration, a couple managed to get through the first security check point at the party. This is very terrifying to me. I remember when President Kennedy was shot and killed from a book depository in Dallas, Texas, more than 40 years ago. I would hope that with technology, the security might have improved through the years. My first reaction was, who is the Secretary of the Treasury? The Secret Service has traditionally… Read more

If a person is in a hospital or a nursing home, the last two months of life are the most expensive. Medicare paid $50 billion last year for the last two months of patients’ lives, more than the government spent on education or the Department of Homeland Security. It is also estimated that 20 to 30 percent of these expenditures had no significant impact on the patient. Dr. Ira Byock of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H. said that modern… Read more

If a person is in a hospital or a nursing home, the last two months of life are the most expensive. Medicare paid $50 billion last year for the last two months of patients’ lives, more than the government spent on education or the Department of Homeland Security. It is also estimated that 20 to 30 percent of these expenditures had no significant impact on the patient. Dr. Ira Byock of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire said that… Read more

United States Attorney General Eric Holder, Jr. was met with criticism from Republican senators when he announced recently, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators will be tried in a New York federal court. Some Republican senators fear that the trial could free some of the world’s most notorious terrorists, but President Obama said that federal courts, especially those in New York, had been used to convict hundreds of terrorist suspects now imprisoned in the United States. The people… Read more

On Nov. 5, Trish Regan, the anchor for CNBC’s ‘The Call,’ reported that some Wall Street firms had received significant doses of H1N1 vaccines. Goldman Sachs reportedly received 200 doses, and Citigroup received 1,200 doses. “I’m six weeks away from delivering twins, and I couldn’t get the H1N1 vaccine from my obstetrician or the hospital where I plan to deliver,” said Regan. “Eventually, I did get the vaccine, but it was not through conventional means.” On  Nov. 1, Army Maj…. Read more

As most students are in a blur after the holidays, some motivated students are taking classes every day, including weekends, for the first two weeks of January. The Winter Term/Intersession 2010 is a short, highly concentrated session of classes offered by the Tseng College. A student may only take three to four units per session, because each unit requires 15 hours of class time during the two-week period. A three-unit class would require 45 hours of class time and a… Read more

Two Northwest Airline pilots were recently suspended for missing their final destination by 150 miles. Their claim was that they were looking at their laptops and had the communications turned off. There were 144 passengers on the flight. The pilots distractions were risking the lives of those 144 people plus their own. They said they were checking their schedules on their laptops. They were probably thinking about their activities on their days off. “It’s hard to stay interested in the… Read more

In an unprecedented move, it was announced recently that the Obama administration would cut the salaries of 25 top executives of the seven largest banking firms in the country. For a presidential administration to propose wage control on a major company is a slippery slope toward government control. It’s an insult to the free market system. Wage control should not be government-driven, but market-driven. If the company loses money, then the wages should be cut naturally, because there isn’t enough… Read more