The general decline in standards today

[jamespowers]

What is sad, is how many so called legitimate charities, only give away 10 cents or less of each dollar they receive!

That is A LOT of them. On top of that, they pay their CEOs waayyy too much money. Quite a racket they have going.

 

[dh66]

What is sad, is how many so called legitimate charities, only give away 10 cents or less of each dollar they receive!

It is absolutely appalling to me how many folks are living large from running charities. It seems to be across the board.....from helping fund cancer research to housing the homeless.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing with this particular organization has always been that, as a "community chest," it promised 100 percent of all donations would be distributed to those in need. The organization is staffed entirely by volunteers -- no paid administrators -- but unfortunately that opened the door to slack oversight of the money, and behold the results. All it takes is one raccoon in the chicken house...

 

[HeyMoe]

We've had an epidemic lately of bookkeeper-level embezzlements,

It has been the same thing here in Vermont. It seems that every month or so there is a news story on someone who cooked the books and took home $100,000+ before it was noticed. My Mom is a bookkeeper and has known a number of the folks that have been charged. I can not imagine what kind of arse you need to be to take something that isn't yours.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Up here the main thread seems to be an addiction to "pain medications."

 

[HeyMoe]

Up here the main thread seems to be an addiction to "pain medications."

Unfortunately I think that is common across the USA.

 

[HeyMoe]

I should mention that I work in mental health. The population we are seeing now tend to be younger, first break folks that have had drug induced psychosis. When I was director of security at a local college the amount of pain killers going across campus reviled the other drugs (Meth, Heroin, LSD and Marijuana).

 

[LizzieMaine]

The most dangerous drug-dealers today aren't saggy-pantsed gangstas from the hood -- they're the Lexus-driving Dr. Feelgoods who've cut a vast and highly profitable swath across suburbia.

 

[HeyMoe]

Oh the rich punks who are doing it as some sort of right of passage or because it is "cool"

 

[LizzieMaine]

Or the affluent middle-aged white people who're convinced that every little twinge and ache they experience needs to be "medicated." This is the same class of people who were most heavily ravaged by narcotic addictions a hundred years ago, and now we're going thru it all over again because they're too stupid to understand what they're putting into themselves.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Up here the main thread seems to be an addiction to "pain medications."

My reflex in these embezzling episodes is to look for another addiction: gambling. We had a local pastor of a fairly conservative congregation here a few years ago who was skimming the church collections to feed his gambling addiction.

 

[rjb1]

These embezzling schemes occur about once a month here in the mid-South. What amazes me most about them is the amounts stolen, often well above $100,000. It is always hard to imagine how much money these churches/charities/community-service organizations must have if they can lose over $100K and yet no one even notices it's gone.
Back when I had my own engineering company it would not have been possible to steal that much, since there never was that much.

 

[Stan the Man]

The comptroller of Dixon, a small northern Illinois town whose prior claim to fame was as the home town of Ronald Reagan, was arrested for embezzling 53 million over something like 22 years.

"A million here and a million there and pretty soon you're talking real money."

 

[Zombie_61]

The most dangerous drug-dealers today aren't saggy-pantsed gangstas from the hood -- they're the Lexus-driving Dr. Feelgoods who've cut a vast and highly profitable swath across suburbia.

And the pharmaceutical companies advertising their wares on television only serve to enable this. "Ask your doctor about Younameitol." They're turning people into hypochondriacs and getting rich(er) in the process; treating ailments both real and imagined is big business here in the U.S..

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I'm dictator, prescription pharmaceutical advertising will be banned. We got along until the 1980s without it, and we can get along without it again.

 

[sheeplady]

What about the doctor's that prescribe these things?

The doctor (and pharmacists in the sense of filling prescriptions) should be a gatekeeper. I don't buy the excuse that people "beg" and "harass" their doctors until they get a drug and the poor doctor has no choice but prescribe it.

A doctor is a person who went to school for 8 years, followed by at least 3 years of residency (in the U.S.), and then often additional training- I believe you can estimate within a reasonable degree if a person needs narcotics.

I also don't buy in this day of electronic medical records that Doctor A simply doesn't "know" that Doctor B and/or Doctor C have also prescribed narcotics to the same patient. Likewise, pharmacies should keep a watch for how many narcotic prescriptions individuals have in the queue across their branches.

I know that addicts work around lots of practices and safeguards, but they are able to do so because so many people who are gatekeepers look the other way, if not actively participate in it.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

[video=youtube;_XPxPIAszsg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XPxPIAszsg[/video]

 

[ChiTownScion]

When I'm dictator, prescription pharmaceutical advertising will be banned. We got along until the 1980s without it, and we can get along without it again.

:eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap

 

[ChiTownScion]

.... I don't buy the excuse that people "beg" and "harass" their doctors until they get a drug and the poor doctor has no choice but prescribe it.

A doctor is a person who went to school for 8 years, followed by at least 3 years of residency (in the U.S.), and then often additional training- I believe you can estimate within a reasonable degree if a person needs narcotics.

This brings to mind a change of rules during the Clinton administration. Pharmaceutical companies are no longer allowed to provide the perks and goodies to medical providers in conjunction to continuing medical ed presentations. The presumption was that the docs could be "bought off" and push certain meds as a bargained-for exchange for accepting the perks. I always thought that whoever has that idea really didn't know the providers that I knew: they were pretty independent and not the least bit shy about telling anyone to take a hike if they thought that they were out of line.

In those good old days, my wife's field (general pediatrics) really didn't draw the more elaborate perks (cruises, trips to Hawaii, etc.) that other specialties attracted. But we did get some nice meals, theater tickets (Phantom of the Opera, Les Mis), a day with the kids at Six Flags, etc. But there was always a hitch: you usually had to sit through a lecture on medical subjects, and some of the presenters were pretty shameless in pimping the products of the drug company paying for the goodies.

Since it always involved childhood medical conditions, you could always bet that either snot, vomit, or diarrhea were talked about. Just the things you don't want to hear about before chowing down at a Michelin star French restaurant. Loved the good food, but always felt that it was never really "free" after being grossed out beforehand.

 

[Zombie_61]

When I'm dictator, prescription pharmaceutical advertising will be banned. We got along until the 1980s without it, and we can get along without it again.

I've long thought the same thing. If I were ever in a position of power to effect such a change it would be the very first thing I'd do.