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Whats intelligent

If the Temple Opera block is not part of the deal.. How did the project get to the level of investment they are asking for? The city of Eau Claire WI is building their new arts facility that is much larger and the projected cost is Much less than the proposed renovation costs for the Norshor. This does not add up. Well it does add up but for the wrong reasons.

Building new is generally cheaper than fixing up something old, and the NorShor requires a massive amount of fixing. All of its major building systems will have to be completely replaced. A new elevator will have to be installed. A skywalk connection to Greysolon Plaza (another Sherman property) is part of the plan. To qualify for the historical tax credits, the project must follow stringent architectural requirements that jack the cost up further. The estimated price of this project has been rising for years.

All of that is fine but not to the tune of $24,000,000. Is it a case of the project needing to get to a certain revenue level to qualify for finding or to gain private interest?

I meant qualify for Funding. That price tag seems a bit inflated to convert it in to a great venue for Live performance. Are there structural issues with the facility that warrant a massive rebuild? I can only imagine the consulting fees that are adding up.......;)

The current price tag is $30 million. Sherman has mentioned structural issues in the past. I don't know any more of the nuts and bolts than I've already mentioned. The NorShor isn't on DEDA's Jan. 27 agenda, so I guess the delay is continuing.

As an aside, the Playhouse has promised to bring in 280 nights of live performances a year once the theater is operational.

Last December 2015, I wrote to our Prime Minister:

My family lost our son Daniel (10 November 1976 – 6 August 2014), to prescription medication.

Daniel suffered depression, for which he was prescribed psychotropic drugs approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. This included the off-label prescription of a drug for which Eli Lilly was fined over US$1.4 billion in 2009 for illegal marketing.

Daniel’s death was so out of character, and Eli Lilly’s criminal conviction so unexpected, I vowed to investigate further. I soon discovered overwhelming evidence of bribery, fraud and corruption involving the pharmaceutical industry. The following sources all reach much the same conclusion:

Books and videos
• Gwen Olsen: ‘Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher’
• Dr Ben Goldacre: ‘Bad Pharma’
• Dr David Healy: ‘Pharmageddon’
• Prof. Peter Gotzsche: ‘Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare’
• Dr Peter Rost: ‘Confessions of a Healthcare Hit-man’

Videos
• ‘The Marketing of Madness: Are We All Insane?’
• ‘Making a Killing: The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging’


Prof. Gotzsche is co-founder of The Cochrane Collaboration, the respected global network of independent research scientists. His book (above), includes the following statements:

p. 23 “In 2012, Pfizer agreed to pay US$60 million to settle a US federal investigation into bribery overseas. Pfizer wasn’t only accused of bribing doctors, but also hospital administrators and drug regulators . . .[they] sought to hide the bribery by listing the payments in accounting records as legitimate expenses, . . .”

p. 24 “High level Roche executives led a cartel that . . . was the most pervasive and harmful criminal antitrust conspiracy ever uncovered.”

p. 39 “Bribery is routine and involves large amounts of money. Almost every type of person who can affect the interests of the industry has been bribed: doctors, hospital administrators, cabinet ministers . . . drug registration officials . . . and political parties. . . .”

p. 77-78 “Rent a key opinion leader to ‘give advice’. . . .” Trade journal Pharmaceutical Marketing advocates: The advisory process is one of the most powerful means of getting close to people and of influencing them. Not only does it help shape medical education, it can help in the process of evaluating how individuals can best be used, motivate them to want to work with you – and with subliminal selling of key messages ongoing all the while.”

p. 79 “An Australian survey showed that one-quarter of the specialists had been a member of a company’s advisory board within the last year. . . . key opinion leaders may receive £50,000 a year to sit on a company’s advisory board, or $400,000 for just 8 days of consulting.”

p. 80-81 “Rent a key opinion leader to ‘educate’ . . . Practical Guide to Medical Education states that potential ‘product champions’ in the medical fraternity are critical to influencing doctors’ thinking, and that ‘The key is to evaluate their views and influence potential, to recruit them to specially designed relationship building activities and then provide them with a programme of appropriate communication platforms. . . . Medical education is a powerful tool that can deliver your message to key audiences and get those audiences to take action that benefits your product.”

p. 84-85 “ . . . by buying most knowledgeable experts in the field, the drug industry also corrupts the peer review system. . . . Industry liaisons may also mean that doctors fail to notify the regulators when a drug-related death is suspected . . .”

p. 87 “Clinical trials are marketing in disguise. . . . This is done very effectively by tightly controlling the flow and type of information about its drugs, both in scientific papers and in marketing. . . . The trials are often flawed by design, additional flaws are introduced during data analysis, and the misleading results are spun to make sure . . . the trial concludes something that is useful for boosting sales.”

p. 94 “ . . . a systematic review of 58 studies showed that the information from the drug industry leads to higher prescribing frequency, higher costs and lower prescribing quality.”

p. 95 “The industry has armies of paid bloggers that distribute pharma material disguised as opinion on the internet. . . . For example, James Murdoch, son of Rupert Murdoch, was on the board of GlaxoSmithKline . . . Like the drug industry, the media are immensely powerful, and when the two join forces, falsehoods are at their worst.”

p. 114 “The drug industry also does what it can to corrupt politicians . . . . The industry pushes the politicians through lobbying, donations and sometimes outright bribery . . . that sacrifice public health for profits.”

Unsurprisingly, nine of the ten companies that Prof. Gotzsche exposes for their criminal activities in his 'Hall of Shame for Big Pharma', are the very same companies that fronted the recent Senate tax avoidance enquiry: Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Merck, Eli Lilly, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Roche and Sanofi. (Drug companies go vague on 'tax rip-off', Sydney Morning Herald, July 2, 2015)

In light of the above, we call on you to initiate a Royal Commission, to investigate the prima facie evidence, described by Prof. Gotzsche, for “widespread crime, corruption, bribery and impotent drug regulation in need of radical reforms. . . . We now suffer from two man-made epidemics, tobacco and prescription drugs, both of which are hugely lethal . . . the norm for both industries is a morally repugnant disregard for human lives.”

We look forward to your reply.

Yours, etc.

Absolutely correct well done now for psychiatrists & general practitioners & pharmacists to tell the public to take note

I surely enjoy your articles. Good reporting. Good writing. Smart guy.

Your review of the transcripts featuring your previous double talking confused school superintendent defending the Red Plan here was troubling.

Regarding the library issue, we went down to the library to check it out a couple of months ago to review the 1918 Fire and get library cards. Pretty good program. We talked to employees. They seemed to agree that it is a creative space. Just in need of some TLC. Anyhow, it's a nice library.

So fix it. Good to go for another forty years. And nobody has to tear up anything downtown. JW Evans

I think I got you confused with Martel's unfolding of school board transcripts regarding Red Plan funding a while back. Anyhow, West Duluth schools are just getting pummeled with student exodus. Hard to stop that nowadays with open enrollment well accepted. JW

280 live performances is ambitious.but define the live performance? The venue will seat 750. That is not enough seats to get the type of performances that could not already play here or that people will want to see. 1000 seats is what is needed. With a 1000 seats the promoters would book it and remove much of the financial risk from the venue and the public. 280 community theater, folk duos. Jug bands and Dylan tribute concerts will not keep this off the public subsidy wagon. The regional promoters need a 1000 functional affordable theater venue and they would keep it off the subsidy train. Just ask them.....They will tell you just like they told DEDA. and All of the various commities formed around this project. TPNL.Jade presents. First ave......go down the list.750 seats can pay a band the extra 250 seats would pay the promoter to take on the risk.

Thanks, JW. I always make sure to say that only "some" library employees feel negatively about their building. There are many happy, enthusiastic library employees who like the building, or at least don't actively dislike it--but they do not seem to be the ones driving policy. The consensus view of policymakers, as the board's November discussion showed, is that the library is just awful. Much of the problem, I think, comes from people's personalities, rather than anything horrible about the building itself. When pressed for specifics, most of the problems that people mention seem to be a result of lack of maintenance.

Where is this story? I've been looking for it to be posted for 2 weeks!

Yes. I missed the hard copy too. Always like reading.

Been looking for those black eyed snakes songs for years. Please let me know if you could tape them for me. Thanks.

Dude! In all of those words, you barely told The Readers anything about this album! No one cares that you know sound engineers. Write about the music and the band if you're going to review a new album. Start a separate column if you want to gush about your super connected music town network.

So disappointed that you awarded the cover painting to two artists and then offhandedly dismissed one wirhout a sorry or any other sign of professional ethics!!! This was hurtful and a sign of a lack of organizational skills!!

Too bad John isn't an engineer or scientist, or truthful ;]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kcovWsrLPQ

Lovelock 2013 -- "We nuclear power soon"...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYP22KfI8lw&feature=youtu.be
http://energyforhumanity.org/climate-energy/nuclear-for-climate-declaration/ (50,000 scientists)
http://tinyurl.com/kn22qcn (Hansen, Caldeira, Emanuel, Wigley)
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2486894/Scientists-urge-climate-groups-nuclear-power-warn-wind-solar-fulfil-worlds-energy-needs.html
http://decarbonisesa.com/2014/06/30/another-climate-scientist-joins-calls-for-nuclear/
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/scientists-tell-greenies-embrace-nuclear-save-plan/2502717/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXTPKGuQhzQ&feature=youtu.be
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/james_hansen_to_mitigate_climate_change_nuclear_energy_should_be_included-154923
http://tinyurl.com/m5qp8vf
http://tinyurl.com/necct2l
http://tinyurl.com/qde7dsc
http://seekerblog.com/2015/03/10/james-hansen-calls-out-big-green-part-2/ (Hansen vs Big Green)
http://tinyurl.com/nh3bsh6
"I also recommend that the public stop providing funds to anti nuke environmental groups. Send a letter saying why you are withdrawing your support. Their position is based partly on fear of losing support from anti-nuke donors, and they are not likely to listen to anything other than financial pressure. If they are allowed to continue to spread misinformation about nuclear power, it is unlikely that we can stop expanded hydro-fracking, continued destructive coal mining, and irreversible climate change."

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/more-views-on-nuclear-power-waste-safety-and-cost/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1
www.slideshare.net/Revkin/dot-nuclear-1-2214-lettersigned-by-4-nuclear-scientists-and-engineers
https://www.facebook.com/download/823098194404759/An-Open-Letter-to-Environmentalists.pdf
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.4.2433

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzbI0UPwQHg
http://www.thesciencecouncil.com/pdfs/P4TP4U.pdf.
http://atomicinsights.com/saving-the-environment-from-environmentalism-2/

Even the dalai Lama has some nuke knowledge.. But, then, he's not into making $ via Internet fluff.
;]
So, John, how many people were killed by nuke plants this past decade? How many by gas? How many by windmills?

What windmill folks don't know...
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth
http://tinyurl.com/or8axal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc7rRPrA7rg

Your next euro vacation spots, John...
http://tinyurl.com/nhhzotu

Those who extract natural resources without consideration of the consequences are conservative. They operate within the rules laid down by both conservatives and liberals. These rules extract no or only nominal depletion taxes and quite often pay the polluter not to pollute.
One is generous in paying taxes for essential such as food? You mean the farm bill that supports Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO)? No. I would rather be labeled a greedy miser. I would rather pay for my food with earnings not taxed than pay for my food with fiat money extracted from taxpayers and printed by the Fed.