Examining A Questionable Big Pharma Influence in Connecticut Law and Politics

Exploring the individuals, and individual entities, that are really behind the actions taken by government, whether local, state, federal, or global, is a constant theme here at TheGoodmanChronicle.com, and one such organization that will continue to come up, when researching events taking place in Connecticut, as well as across the country, is the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

The RWJF is one of the largest private foundations in the country, with a stated goal to "improve the health and health care of all Americans."  Important to note, as we trace the RWJF's involvement in Connecticut legislative policy, is that the RWJF was established with a bequest of shares of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) from its late chief executive, Robert Wood Johnson.  Johnson & Johnson is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies.  This connection is important because many legislative actions, and programs, supported, and funded, by the RWJF, would seemingly benefit the pharmaceutical industry.  Let us explore some of these programs, and legislation, supported by the RWJF, in the state of Connecticut.

In March 2014, I published an article titled Forced Mental Health Assessments Being Proposed For All Children In Connecticut, which discussed legislation that was being presented in the state legislature of Connecticut, which would have required "each pupil enrolled in public school at grades 6, 8, 10 and 12 and each home-schooled child at ages 12, 14 and 17 to have a confidential behavioral health assessment."  This legislation was lobbied for by the president of the board of directors for the CT Association of School
Based Health Centers, JoAnn Eaccarino.  The CT Association of School Based Health Centers receives funding and support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

There is also a program in operation in Connecticut, that has received millions of dollars from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, called "Child First", which is an "evidence-based model that uses home visits and a network of community services to prevent the devastating effects of early childhood adversity."  The founder of Child First, Darcy Lowell, regularly submits testimony to the state legislature, usually in favor of legislation that would use the state to increase the number of children being examined for "mental health".

In a presentation to the state Commission on Children, Lowell discussed the Child First program, where she listed situations that her organization deems "environmental risks" to children.  The list includes obvious risks to children, such as physical abuse, and lack of food, but it also includes questionable risks such as "single parenthood", and "unemployment".  The DCF, or Department of Children and Families, is listed as the leading agency of the Child First program.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation connection to these type of programs should be scrutinized.  It is important to understand how these home-visitation programs and behavioral mental health assessments can be used to increase the number of children on pharmaceutical drugs, thus profiting big pharmaceutical companies like Johnson & Johnson.  Former veteran Congressman Dr. Ron Paul, in 2011, was speaking out against this push for mandatory health screenings, calling it "a persistent lobbying effort, funded by pharmaceutical companies, to increase the number of these (drug) prescriptions to even more children."  If you are thinking that you have nothing to worry about, because neither you, or your children, have a mental illness, keep in mind that the list of mental disorders is ever-growing, and includes illness' such as "Oppositional Defiant Disorder", which you can be labeled with for "disagreeing with someone in a position of authority".  Also, some studies, like the one put out by the Children’s Services Working Group, suggest that the number of people that have a mental illness, many of whom unknowingly, may be as high as 20%, in a state like Connecticut.

Ten Documentaries about African History, Assassinations, Communist China, Medicated Children, Saddam Hussein, Royalty, and more

A random collection of ten documentaries, with my description of each.  I post a different documentary, every time I watch a new one.  To prevent my documentary page from taking an extremely long time to load, I create separate pages for older documentaries.  This is page 4.

Mao Zedong and China's Cultural Revolution (added 12/10/13)

This film briefly chronicles the rise of Mao Zedong as the leader of Communist China from 1949-1976, including the alliance, and eventual denouncement, of the Soviet Union, as well as the denouncement, and eventual alliance, with the United States, during the Nixon administration, through Henry Kissinger. Chairman Mao Zedong encouraged the collectivization of privately held land, and incredible footage shows Chinese peasants beating, and yelling at, former land owners, denouncing them as "capitalist exploiters."  This 45-minute documentary is not the most entertaining film, but gives an interesting short glimpse into this period of Chinese history.

Parents Beware: The United Nations Looking To Give Children of Connecticut Special "Rights"

The United Nations wants to give your children "rights".  You may think your child already has "rights", but the kind of "rights" that the UN wants to legally provide children are the kind that would bring a government agent to your house if you decide to home school your children, bring them to a religious function, or even punish them.  This agent would decide if your actions are, or were, appropriate, and in line with the child's "rights".

The plan to give all of the children of the world the same "rights", is known as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC, or CRC).  It is important to understand that this plan is actually part of a much larger United Nations plan called "Agenda 21."  I have previously written on Agenda 21, and found the document to be a plan by the United Nations to gain more decision making power, or sovereignty, from countries, and create a world in which every resource, water, animals, food, etc., even human resources, and population size, is tracked, and controlled, by a group of non-elected bureaucrats at the UN, working in conjunction with big corporations, and non-governmental organizations (NGO's).  In Article 25, Section 14 of Agenda 21, governments are required to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

In this analysis, I will detail a brief history of "child rights", explore the actual text of this document, the effect this convention has had on countries that have ratified it, and trace its attempted ratification in the United States, down to our own Connecticut state legislature.

History of the CRC

Decades before the UN held a convention on the rights of the child, there were various declarations made, in regards to giving children special rights, even dating back as far as 1924, adopted by the predecessor of the United Nations, the League of Nations.  In 1989, The UN General Assembly adopted the Convention and opened it for signature.  It came into force in 1990, after it was ratified by the required number of nations.

In the United States, under the administration of Bill Clinton, the CRC was signed, but the treaty was never submitted for Senate approval, due to opposition from some members of the Senate.  More recently, in 2009, the Obama administration revived efforts to have the United States sign onto the CRC, according to former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice.  The following year, thirty-one Republican senators cosponsored a resolution opposing the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  The United States is only one of a few countries yet to ratify the treaty.

Important to note, potential future Presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton is a strong supporter of the treaty.

In Their Own Words

Let us examine the actual text of the treaty.  This "Convention on the Rights of the Child" treaty is 15 pages, consisting of 54 Articles, detailing the assertion that children have special rights, and the ways to implement the bureaucracy that is needed to insure that governments are "protecting" these children's rights.

When dealing with the United Nations, as with any government organization, it is important to critically examine the grammar used, see past the happy, positive sounding rhetoric, and be able to understand the actual details of a plan.  The CRC opens with a preamble that emphasizes the importance of "the protection and harmonious development of the child".  Again, this sounds nice, but we must remember, this could mean anything, and is coming from an organization that calls their violent military army, "peace keeping" troops.

TV Doctors Are Paid To Push Drugs and Vaccines

Studies show two-thirds of regular television viewers learn about health from TV dramas.  Big pharmaceutical companies know this, and team up with Hollywood, to push their medical agenda, and prescription drugs.  Daytime television is filled with advertisements, and commercials, for all types of prescription drugs, but the fairly recent trend of glorifying certain doctor/actors, as medical experts, is being exploited and manipulated by Big Pharma, to further push their agenda.

The Doctors TV Show

We should question why these doctors wear their white lab coats and hospital scrubs when they are on stage, performing for television, as if they were just backstage performing medical procedures. 

Dr. Drew

The Many Faces of Dr. Drew

David Drew Pinsky, best known as Dr. Drew, has become one of the most famous doctor/television personalities, with a popular syndicated radio show, as well as starring roles in, and producing, a number of television shows.   

What you may not know is that Dr. Drew was involved in the largest health care fraud case in U.S. history.  GlaxoSmithKline LLC, the worlds fourth-largest pharmaceutical company, was forced to pay $3 billion and plead guilty to promoting two popular drugs for unapproved uses, failing to disclose important safety information on a third drug, as well as a number of other complaints.  The company was even paying kickbacks to doctors to prescribe those drugs, as well as others.  According to U.S. attorney Carmin Ortiz, the sales force of GSK "bribed physicians to prescribe GSK products using every imaginable form of high priced entertainment, from Hawaiian vacations to paying doctors millions of dollars to go on speaking tours to a European pheasant hunt to tickets to Madonna concerts, and this is just to name a few."

Legislators Pushing Forced Medication In Wake of CT School Shooting

Accused CT shooter, Adam Lanza

Politicians are pushing for more 'mental health treatment', in the aftermath of the CT Shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT.  As I had documented last week, the majority of these public mass murders, involve the accused killers either taking, or coming off of, 'psychiatric' drugs.  Regardless of how strong the connection between these prescription drugs, and mass murder, become, our public 'officials' continue to team-up with the mainstream media, who are both heavily financially influenced by pharmaceutical companies, to tell us that even MORE drugs, given out to MORE people, and directing MORE money to the pharmaceutical companies is the direction we should go in.

There is a number of public 'officials' now attempting to push a more aggressive mental health agenda, and here a few examples:

-  South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said Thursday that the state should be able to "detect it in schools", when speaking on mental health problems.

-  Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia issued a statement on the tragedy in Newtown, CT, saying "there is an incredible shortage of mental health providers across the country...this is yet another area where action is necessary."

-  A coalition of health "experts" have asked the federal government for new funds for mental health programs.   Psychologist Ron Manderscheid, with the National Association of Counties, leads the coalition, and claims "only about a third of the people who actually have a mental illness get any care."

After Writing ObamaCare Legislation, Elizabeth Fowler Goes To Work For Largest Pharmaceutical Company In The World

Elizabeth Fowler

Big corporations have given Capitalism a bad name.  While the idea of looking for new ways to generate profit, and cut expenses, is noble to most small business owners, big business has been taking this goal of bigger profits to a different, immoral, and often illegal, level.  Governments are often used by big business to help pass rules and regulations that are favorable to one group, and harmful to others.  Instead of an actual free-market capitalist system, where everyone is on equal ground competing with each other, we have a system of pay-offs, lobbyists, and revolving doors, often referred to as crony-Capitalism.

The best modern-day case of crony-Capitalism is probably the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), or as it is commonly referred to as, ObamaCare, a bill that penalizes people who choose not to buy insurance from a private provider.  This act essentially creates millions of new customers for the insurance companies.  On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that the Federal government does not have the Constitutional right to mandate that people must buy health insurance from a private company. However, it does have the right to tax those that don't, according to the Supreme Court. Therefore, it upheld the Act.

The poster child for this immoral merger of big business and government would have to be the "architect" of ObamaCare, Elizabeth Fowler.  In 2001, Fowler was working as chief health policy counsel under Montana Sentator Max Baucus, until 2006, when she departed for a two-year stint at health insurance company WellPoint, only to return to the Senate in 2008, again working on health policy for Senator Baucus, where she would end up being a main player in the Senate health care negotiations that would eventually bring us Obamacare.  Senator Baucus had even singled out Fowler as the person who layed the "foundation" and the "blueprint" of what eventually became ObamaCare.

(Sidenote: WellPoint, Inc. is the largest managed health care, for-profit company in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, a federation of 38 separate health insurance organizations and companies in the United States. Combined, they directly or indirectly provide health insurance to over 99 million Americans.)