Month: May 2016

Follow the Money, Not Bathroom Laws or Nazi Captain America

Captain America: Hail Hydra! - Marvel Comics

Captain America: Hail Hydra! – Marvel Comics

We’ve had seven years of the Obama administration’s orchestrated distractions. The President gained the office promising a new era, supported by “Baptists” (in this case, idealistic Progressives and voters hopeful he would bridge party and racial gaps — see Bootleggers and Baptists) and “bootleggers” (crony capitalists and the finance industry, which placed their sympathizers in Treasury and Justice to make sure no true reprisals or reform would occur and that TARP and subsidy money would finance their ventures.) The complicit media help promote whatever story the administration is selling each week — independent reporting is expensive while rewritten PR releases from government press offices and video of staged news events fills TV news time and newspaper column inches cheaply.

The United States has a wide variety of special interests whose contention prevents a single coalition from taking over and doing too much damage. The effect over time, though, has been to expand government and its regulation of private businesses to increase the rewards of buying political favors. The Obama administration’s record of boondoggles and project failures is clear, but by dominating news coverage with their talking points, they have distracted citizens who haven’t directly suffered job loss, lost their home, or had their daughter murdered by a criminal immigrant released in a “sanctuary city.”

Gender Free Bathroom

Gender Free Bathroom

The latest non-problem designed to distract is the “bathroom wars.” For decades, transgendered people have used the bathroom they were “dressed for” in relative safety and obscurity, since civilized people don’t expose their genitalia or accost others for looking unusual while relieving themselves. Good manners suggest intentionally not noticing superficial factors of others when forced into the intimacy of the bathroom or locker room, and most people have the good manners and good sense not to react to such things. Similarly, while not completely unheard of, it’s very rare (and illegal) for men to accost women in restrooms or locker rooms.

So there’s no information other than anecdotal suggesting trans people are being harassed in large numbers, or that women or girls are being harassed. And there’s certainly no legal authority under Title IX for Federal-level regulation of bathroom use. There’s really no reason for any regulation of bathroom use, given that such rules are not enforceable or even reasonable when there are many common situations where labels are ignored, as when women duck into the men’s room because the line at “their” bathroom is too long. This is a fine example of customary usage that ain’t broke, so don’t fix it — all fixes are more trouble than leaving it up to custom and common sense.

But much of the media attention not spent following Trump’s latest comments is going to bathroom laws and public posturing related to the issue, like the latest stars to boycott North Carolina while still planning concerts in countries where gays are beaten and jailed. The President and his minions get to appear to be protectors of the weak while their outraged opponents waste effort on an issue that distracts from removing them and their kind from power.

Meanwhile, much social network and news chatter in recent weeks centers around Captain America and the recent decision by the current Marvel comic book writers to rewrite him as an agent of Hydra all these years — a hero originated to stand for American values in opposition to the then-current Third Reich has been revealed to be a Nazi himself, or close enough. The outrage mills are keeping this one going, giving free publicity to the comic book writers and taking up residence in people’s heads.

In both cases, behind-the-scenes interests are jockeying for influence to continue to steal your money and divert it to their ends — their own power and wealth. By keeping the issues of subsidies and crony capitalism too complex for mass understanding and sending up clouds of disinformational chaff like these symbolic, emotional issues, much of the voting population has been bamboozled into fighting each other over symbolic issues while the bootleggers loot the Treasury.

And in that confusion, men like Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders who offer simple, authoritarian solutions to the problems of the status quo corporatist government appear to offer a way out. Neither had the support of the big money interests, but if either won the presidency you can be sure they will attract the same corrupt interests to support and control them.

So spend less time getting outraged about relatively unimportant issues, and more time following the money. Notice how anti-Trump protestors are organized and funded by unions like the SEIU and racist organizations like La Raza, while those same organizations are core Democratic supporters and have been funded illegally by diverting Justice Department settlement funds from the victims of mortgage companies to Democrat-supporting agencies.

Notice that the Clinton Foundation targets its grants to gain good PR or influence while collecting tax-free “donations” from shady and even criminal overseas governments and companies. It’s part of the Clintons’ global influence-peddling machine, built up over decades to allow legal bribery of the former President Bill and Secretary of State and now President-in-Waiting Hillary.

The book Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer documents these indirect bribery schemes:

In 2000, Bill and Hillary Clinton owed millions of dollars in legal debt. Since then, they’ve earned over $130 million. Where did the money come from? Most people assume that the Clintons amassed their wealth through lucrative book deals and high-six-figure fees for speaking gigs. Now, Peter Schweizer shows who is really behind those enormous payments.

In his New York Times bestselling books Extortion and Throw Them All Out, Schweizer detailed patterns of official corruption in Washington that led to congressional resignations and new ethics laws. In Clinton Cash, he follows the Clinton money trail, revealing the connection between their personal fortune, their “close personal friends,” the Clinton Foundation, foreign nations, and some of the highest ranks of government.

Schweizer reveals the Clinton’s troubling dealings in Kazakhstan, Colombia, Haiti, and other places at the “wild west” fringe of the global economy. In this blockbuster exposé, Schweizer merely presents the troubling facts he’s uncovered. Meticulously researched and scrupulously sourced, filled with headline-making revelations, Clinton Cash raises serious questions of judgment, of possible indebtedness to an array of foreign interests, and ultimately, of fitness for high public office.

Some of their schemes — like the Haitian telecomm contracts they wangled for supporter’s companies that skimmed fees from every telephone call between Haitians and their US relatives — are infuriating in that they stole from people least able to afford padded bills. Haitians have correctly figured out that the Clintons only pretend to care about them.

Jonathan Katz, author of The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster about Haitian relief efforts of the past two decades, had this to say about Clinton’s influence in Haiti:

There’s nowhere Clinton had more influence or respect when she became Secretary of State than in Haiti, and it was clear that she planned to use that to make Haiti the proving ground for her vision of American power. By now I’d imagine she was expecting to constantly be pointing to Haiti on the campaign trail as one of the great successes of her diplomatic career. Instead it’s one of her biggest disappointments by nearly any measure, with the wreckage of the Martelly administration she played a larger role than anyone in installing being the biggest and latest example.


Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples OrganizationsDeath by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations,  available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

 


Who Killed Prince?: Update – Buprenorphine Implant Approved by FDA

FDA Approves Titan Implant - photo: Titan

FDA Approves Titan Implant – photo: Titan

The FDA has finally approved Titan Pharmaceutical’s buprenorphine implant after years of unnecessary delay, letting doctors have another useful weapon in treating opioid addiction. The background is here:
Who Killed Prince? Restrictions on Buprenorphine.

The implant provides a smooth low level of buprenorphine sufficient to relieve opioid cravings, but not enough to degrade mental functions; patients on the implant testify that, unlike opioids or pill forms of buprenorphine, it makes them feel normal so they can function in their daily lives.

The Reuters story mentions the neo-Puritan objections:

The first-ever implant to fight addiction to opioids, a class of drugs that includes prescription painkillers and heroin, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday. The matchstick-sized implant, developed by Titan Pharmaceuticals Inc and privately owned Braeburn Pharmaceuticals, is by design less susceptible to abuse or the illicit resale that plagues existing oral therapies. Fewer than half of the estimated 2.2 million Americans who need treatment for opioid abuse are receiving help, according to the U.S. Centers for Human and Health Services (HHS).

Currently, two drugs are predominantly used to treat opioid addiction — methadone, which is dispensed only in government-endorsed clinics, and the less-addictive buprenorphine, which exists as a pill or strip of film. While effective, a pill or film may be lost, forgotten or stolen. Evidence suggests that the use of these medicines as part of the overall treatment program are more effective than short-term detoxification programs aimed at abstinence, the FDA said on Thursday….

“I intend to make this the most successful implant that’s ever been marketed … and I think it’s absolutely possible given the unmet need,” Braeburn Chief Executive Behshad Sheldon said in an interview ahead of the FDA decision.

However, some doctors are concerned that the implant may incentivise patients to rely solely on medication, and ignore the lifestyle changes they need to make.

This is the neo-Puritan impulse — if you lack the ability to get off entirely, you should just suffer and die because you don’t deserve a normal life. Addiction is not a “lifestyle choice,” it’s an addiction, and those prone to addiction are generally going to be addicted to something, or many things — the goal of treatment should be to move the addict to habits which don’t interfere with leading a productive and satisfying life. I am, for example, addicted to coffee, working out, eating well, and getting a good night’s sleep…

Since it’s an implant, if it isn’t replaced after six months the patient will taper off the drug fairly slowly, and it might well be easy enough to go off it completely as a result. But even if viewed as permanent maintenance, it is much better for the patient and society than allowing the peaks and valleys of opioid addiction to wreck the patient’s life and possibly kill them.

We are also seeing these perfectionists in the current effort to outlaw vaping, which is one of the best ways to get smokers off the much more damaging cigarette smoking habit — see FDA Wants More Lung Cancer.

The implant has a bright future now. Too bad tens of thousands of people died without treatment in the three years the FDA delayed it. The Reuters story continues:

Braeburn estimated the U.S. market for opioid addiction treatments at about $2 billion, excluding methadone and Vivitrol, Alkermes Plc’s treatment for the prevention of relapse after opioid detoxification.

CEO Sheldon declined to specify a price for the implant on Thursday, but said it would be substantially cheaper than Vivitrol. “We are hoping that our first patient will have received the implant by the first day of summer or June 21,” she added.

The market for long-acting therapies such as Probuphine could be even larger if attempts to raise the limit on the number of opioid addicts a doctor can treat are successful. Under the current law, a doctor can treat only 30 opioid addicts within a year of obtaining a waiver, rising to a maximum 100 after procurement of a second waiver. The Congress and the HHS are working toward increasing this limit. Of particular interest is a proposal that exempts from the patient limit any treatment directly administered by a physician, such as an implant or injection.

UPDATED 2 JUNE 2016:

The preliminary autopsy report has been released showing cause of death as an overdose of Fentanyl, an opioid stronger than morphine or heroin. The report is minimal and gives no hint of what investigators might have found or what legal actions Prince’s doctors may face.


Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples OrganizationsDeath by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations,  available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

 


More reading on other topics:

Update on: Who Killed Prince? Restrictions on Buprenorphine
Death by HR: EEOC Incompetence and the Coming Idiocracy
Regulation Strangling Innovation: Planes, Trains, and Hyperloop
Captain America and Progressive Infantilization
The Great Progressive Stagnation vs. Dynamism
FDA Wants More Lung Cancer
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Public Employee Unions
Jane Jacobs’ Monstrous Hybrids: Guardians vs Commerce
Death by HR: How Affirmative Action is Crippling America
Death by HR: The End of Merit in Civil Service
Death by HR: History and Practice of Affirmative Action and the EEOC
Civil Service: Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive Dream
Bootleggers and Baptists
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Justice Dept. Extortion
Corrupt Feedback Loops, Goldman Sachs: More Justice Dept. Extortion
Death by HR: The Birth and Evolution of the HR Department
Death by HR: The Simple Model of Project Labor
Levellers and Redistributionists: The Feudal Underpinnings of Socialism
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
Trump World: Looking Backward
Minimum Wage: The Parable of the Ladder
Selective Outrage
Culture Wars: Co-Existence Through Limited Government
Social Justice Warriors, Jihadists, and Neo-Nazis: Constructed Identities
Tuitions Inflated, Product Degraded, Student Debts Unsustainable
The Morality of Glamour

On Affirmative Action and Social Policy:

Affirmative Action: Chinese, Indian-Origin Citizens in Malaysia Oppressed
Affirmative Action: Caste Reservation in India
Diversity Hires: Pressure on High Tech<a
Title IX Totalitarianism is Gender-Neutral
Public Schools in Poor Districts: For Control Not Education
Real-Life “Hunger Games”: Soft Oppression Destroys the Poor
The Social Decay of Black Neighborhoods (And Yours!)
Child Welfare Ideas: Every Child Gets a Government Guardian!
“Income Inequality” Propaganda is Just Disguised Materialism

The greatest hits from SubstrateWars.com (Science Fiction topics):

Fear is the Mindkiller
Mirror Neurons and Irene Gallo
YA Dystopias vs Heinlein et al: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again
Selective Outrage
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
“Tomorrowland”: Tragic Misfire
The Death of “Wired”: Hugo Awards Edition
Hugos, Sad Puppies 3, and Direct Knowledge
Selective Outrage and Angry Tribes
Men of Honor vs Victim Culture
SFF, Hugos, Curating the Best
“Why Aren’t There More Women Futurists?”
Science Fiction Fandom and SJW warfare

More reading on the military:

US Military: From No Standing Armies to Permanent Global Power
US Military: The Desegration Experience
The VA Scandals: Death by Bureaucracy

Death by HR: EEOC Incompetence and the Coming Idiocracy

EEOC and Ford Agree to Mediation - photo: EEOC

EEOC and Ford Agree to Mediation – photo: EEOC

After the EEOC lost a number of high-profile cases like the Sears case of 1980, where EEOC allegations of “disparate impact” of Sears practices on women in sales employment were unaccompanied by evidence or complaints, settlements have predominated. The staff at the EEOC has evolved over the decades since; new recruits tend to have been beneficiaries of AA themselves, and the Obama administration has encouraged agency activism throughout government, but especially in the Office of Civil Rights and the EEOC. But courts remain unpersuaded by their cases, slapping them down for lack of evidence and overreach. Walter Olson commented:

…it’s not easy to think of an agency to whose views federal courts nowadays give less deference than the EEOC. As I’ve noted in a series of posts, judges appointed by Presidents of both political parties have lately made a habit of smacking down the commission’s positions, often in cases where it has tried to get away with a stretchy interpretation of existing law. See, for example, the Fourth Circuit’s rebuke of “pervasive errors and utterly unreliable analysis“ in EEOC expert testimony, Justice Stephen Breyer’s scathing majority opinion in Young v. U.P.S. on the shortcomings of the EEOC’s legal stance (in a case the plaintiff won), or these stinging defeats dealt out to the commission in three other cases. [8]

The EEOC is a prime example of the loss of organizational competence that occurs when AA hiring is the highest priority. Unlike many government agencies and private companies, mediocre or worse AA hires are not just scattered through the organization where they can be routed around, but make up most of the staff and management. The result is a look at the Idiocracy of the future, where lawyers can’t law, analysts can’t analyze, and investigators make s**t up for their reports. Where political affiliation is more important than competence, the result is an ethnic and political spoils system no more productive than Andrew Jackson’s patronage-packed government.

In the most recent high-profile case, the EEOC’s settlement demands were so unjust the accused company spent a lot of money to take their case all the way to the Supreme Court, resulting in another embarrassing slapdown and award of as much as $4 million in attorney’s fees to the company. Walter Olson at Cato at Liberty wrote:

…In last week’s Supreme Court decision in CRST Van Expedited, Inc. v. EEOC, it was back to the dunking booth for the much-disrespected commission. The ruling, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, was unanimous. It laid out in detail a long tale of shoddy EEOC litigation waged against the Iowa-based trucking company CRST, in which the commission took a female driver’s complaint of sexual harassment during training and attempted to expand it into a giant “pattern and practice” lawsuit that might have been settled for millions. Rather than settling, the trucking company decided to fight. The ensuing litigation did not, to understate things, show the EEOC at its best.

It eventually became clear that the federal anti-bias agency had failed to investigate or otherwise adequately advance more than 150 of the claims it had tried to add, which were accordingly dismissed, leaving only two intact. A federal judge granted CRST attorneys’ fees on the prevailing Supreme Court standard of Christiansburg Garment, which permits defendants to recover fees when an employment discrimination claim is “frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless.” The EEOC, however, resisted the fee order on the grounds that, under a quirky Eighth Circuit interpretation, even a frivolous claim does not generate a fee entitlement unless decided “on the merits.” And the 150 claims it had bungled had not been dismissed “on the merits” – they hadn’t gotten even that far.[9]

While there’s no way to tell exactly which EEOC staff would qualify as “diversity hires” (people who would not have been the best candidates for the job if their race, sex, or ethnicity had not been given special preference), we can guess from the extreme overrepresentation of those classes. Here are the diversity numbers from OPM for EEOC’s 2010-2014 staff:

[EEOC Staff: Diversity and Inclusion: Overview[10]]

Diversity Categories

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

Native Hawaiian / Pacific Islander

0.1 %

0.1 %

0.1 %

0.1 %

0.1 %

American Indian / Alaskan Native

0.7 %

0.6 %

0.6 %

0.5 %

0.7 %

Asian

3.8 %

3.6 %

3.7 %

3.8 %

4.2 %

White

38.8 %

39.6 %

39.1 %

38.7 %

38.9 %

Hispanic

13.8 %

13.5 %

13.7 %

14.0 %

14.5 %

Black

41.7 %

41.1 %

41.4 %

41.3 %

40.2 %

More Than One Race

1.1 %

1.4 %

1.4 %

1.5 %

1.4 %

Female

64.4 %

63.6 %

63.9 %

63.9 %

62.5 %

Male

35.6 %

36.4 %

36.1 %

36.1 %

37.5 %

 

The most obvious overrepresentation; Black staffers make up 40% of the EEOC staff, while only 12% of the US population, a factor of more than three. Female staff are at 62.5% vs. 50%, and self-designated Hispanics at 14.5% vs 17% in the general population. White staffers, at 39%, are two-thirds as numerous as would be expected from their 62.2% of the general population. Another part of the report has Disabled staff at 18%, much more than the 11.7% of the total population considered disabled.[11]

What do we make of this? It is certainly reasonable for those most interested in the issues addressed by an agency to preferentially apply for jobs there; it is natural to want to work on issues you believe are meaningful and important. But the irony is that the EEOC does not accept such reasoning when a private company explains its imbalances as due to employee preferences. We can imagine the EEOC leaning on itself to hire more whites, males, and able workers to make up for the imbalance, and filing a court case alleging “disproportionate impact” of the EEOC’s hiring process — since their numbers are skewed, the EEOC must ipso facto be discriminating in employment!

—
[8] “EEOC: Let Us Imagineer ENDA For You,” Walter Olson, Cato At Liberty, July 17, 2015
http://www.cato.org/blog/eeoc-let-us-imagineer-enda-you
[9] “CRST Van Expedited: Back To the Dunking Booth for the EEOC,” Walter Olson, Cato at Liberty, May 24, 2016 http://www.cato.org/blog/crst-van-expedited-back-dunking-booth-eeoc
[10] “Diversity & Inclusion,Federal Workforce At-a-Glance,” accessed May 25, 2016
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/diversity-and-inclusion/federal-workforce-at-a-glance/
[11] Numbers of disabled are hard to determine because of the definitional issues, and the lack of labor force participation of many. But the BLS tries, showing 29.2 million disabled potential workers out of a population of 247.9 million able workers. See: “Economic news release,” BLS, 2014 Annual. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/disabl.t01.htm


Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples OrganizationsDeath by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations,  available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

 


More reading on other topics:

Regulation Strangling Innovation: Planes, Trains, and Hyperloop
Captain America and Progressive Infantilization
The Great Progressive Stagnation vs. Dynamism
FDA Wants More Lung Cancer
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Public Employee Unions
Jane Jacobs’ Monstrous Hybrids: Guardians vs Commerce
Death by HR: How Affirmative Action is Crippling America
Death by HR: The End of Merit in Civil Service
Death by HR: History and Practice of Affirmative Action and the EEOC
Civil Service: Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive Dream
Bootleggers and Baptists
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Justice Dept. Extortion
Corrupt Feedback Loops, Goldman Sachs: More Justice Dept. Extortion
Death by HR: The Birth and Evolution of the HR Department
Death by HR: The Simple Model of Project Labor
Levellers and Redistributionists: The Feudal Underpinnings of Socialism
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
Trump World: Looking Backward
Minimum Wage: The Parable of the Ladder
Selective Outrage
Culture Wars: Co-Existence Through Limited Government
Social Justice Warriors, Jihadists, and Neo-Nazis: Constructed Identities
Tuitions Inflated, Product Degraded, Student Debts Unsustainable
The Morality of Glamour

On Affirmative Action and Social Policy:

Affirmative Action: Chinese, Indian-Origin Citizens in Malaysia Oppressed
Affirmative Action: Caste Reservation in India
Diversity Hires: Pressure on High Tech<a
Title IX Totalitarianism is Gender-Neutral
Public Schools in Poor Districts: For Control Not Education
Real-Life “Hunger Games”: Soft Oppression Destroys the Poor
The Social Decay of Black Neighborhoods (And Yours!)
Child Welfare Ideas: Every Child Gets a Government Guardian!
“Income Inequality” Propaganda is Just Disguised Materialism

The greatest hits from SubstrateWars.com (Science Fiction topics):

Fear is the Mindkiller
Mirror Neurons and Irene Gallo
YA Dystopias vs Heinlein et al: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again
Selective Outrage
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
“Tomorrowland”: Tragic Misfire
The Death of “Wired”: Hugo Awards Edition
Hugos, Sad Puppies 3, and Direct Knowledge
Selective Outrage and Angry Tribes
Men of Honor vs Victim Culture
SFF, Hugos, Curating the Best
“Why Aren’t There More Women Futurists?”
Science Fiction Fandom and SJW warfare

More reading on the military:

US Military: From No Standing Armies to Permanent Global Power
US Military: The Desegration Experience
The VA Scandals: Death by Bureaucracy

Update on: Who Killed Prince? Restrictions on Buprenorphine

Prince: 1999 Cover - Wikipedia

Prince: 1999 Cover – Wikipedia

Updating Who Killed Prince? Restrictions on Buprenorphine:

First, the public release of the autopsy report is likely to be delayed, possibly for months. The complex issues and possible prosecution of the doctors involved are said to be causing authorities to take more time before concluding their investigation of the death. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune has more:

Prince appeared to have been dead for at least six hours before his body was found in a Paisley Park elevator last month, a responding paramedic told staff members, law enforcement officers and others at the scene….

Sources with knowledge of the investigation have told the Star Tribune that despite putting on a calm face after his emergency treatment for an opioid overdose in Moline, Ill., on April 15, Prince grew increasingly agitated in the following days. That prompted one member of his staff to place a call to New York at 6 a.m. on April 20 — the day before the musician’s body was found — seeking advice from someone who had recently worked with the musician, a source said.

Later that day, Prince was given an intravenous treatment at a local hospital, a source with knowledge of the investigation said.

It’s not clear whether that visit came before or after the doctor treating him for withdrawal symptoms made a house call that evening at Paisley Park.

According to several sources, Prince’s staff eventually reached out to Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, a well-known environmental and labor activist in the San Francisco Bay Area who has been credited with helping Prince recover the rights to his early catalog of songs from Warner Bros.

Ellis-Lamkins called Dr. Howard Kornfeld, a pain and addiction specialist in Mill Valley, Calif., seeking his help to get the musician off prescription painkillers, the sources said.

Her call would have been placed less than 12 hours before Prince’s body was discovered.

Ellis-Lamkins, reached by phone, declined to comment. “I cared deeply about him, and I am not ready to speak publicly,” she wrote the Star Tribune in a follow-up e-mail. “I also know how much he valued his privacy and want to respect his wishes.”

Ellis-Lamkins is a close associate of Van Jones, a Yale-trained lawyer and environmental and social activist who briefly served as a special adviser to the Obama administration. Jones, now a commentator for CNN, was close to Prince and his surviving siblings and attended a recent probate hearing in Carver County District Court to lend his support….

Bill Mauzy, a Minneapolis attorney who has spoken on Kornfeld’s behalf, has said that Kornfeld is widely known for his use of buprenorphine to help wean users from opioids….

In earlier interviews, Mauzy said that Kornfeld couldn’t leave California immediately to meet with Prince, so he sent his son Andrew — who works with his father’s clinic — to Minnesota to explain the treatment. Mauzy represents Andrew Kornfeld.

Court records show that Andrew Kornfeld arrived at Paisley Park the morning of April 21. Sources have told the Star Tribune that he arrived with Kirk Johnson — Prince’s longtime friend, drummer and business associate — and Meron Bekure, Prince’s assistant. It was Johnson and Bekure who found Prince unconscious in an elevator and began screaming.

Andrew Kornfeld called 911 at 9:43 a.m. and said that Prince appeared to be dead, according to the transcript of the call. Dr. Michael Todd Schulenberg arrived at Paisley Park a short time later and after paramedics were on the scene, according to one source. A search warrant filed in the death investigation said Schulenberg told investigators that he had treated Prince twice in April — including the day before Prince’s body was found — and that he had arrived at Paisley Park to deliver some test results.

The painkiller Percocet was present in Prince’s body when he died, and pills were found at the death scene, sources with knowledge of the investigation previously told the Star Tribune….
Andrew Kornfeld was carrying buprenorphine with him when he arrived at Paisley Park, though he is not licensed to administer prescription drugs. Mauzy has said Howard Kornfeld gave the drug to his son to bring to another, unidentified Minnesota doctor who is specially certified to prescribe the drug and who had planned to see Prince the morning he was found dead. Mauzy said the Kornfelds never provided buprenorphine to Prince, however.

“Andrew did not deliver or dispense or administer any medication to Prince,” Mauzy said Friday. “It is obvious that Andrew had nothing whatsoever to do with Prince’s death.”

TMZ has suggested a conspiracy theory based on leaked police reports — we’ll soon know more when the autopsy report is made public, but they suggest (contrary to Dr. Kornfeld’s son’s lawyer’s statements) that buprenorphine might have been given to Prince before his death. If that were true, it’s well-known that incautious addition of buprenorphine to an existing high level of opiates can precipitate a withdrawal crisis. While I doubt this version of events is what happened, if it turns out to be true we will have another celebrity doctor trial fiasco a la Michael Jackson’s. Kornfeld’s son is on shaky legal ground and Prince’s local doctor could reasonably be accused of malpractice.

Here’s a bit from TMZ’s latest story:

As we reported, Prince’s doctor, Michael Schulenberg, told authorities he went to Prince’s home to personally deliver test results. Andrew Kornfeld, the son of California rehab Dr. Howard Kornfeld, was also present and had Buprenorphine pills in his backpack. The pills are used to treat opiate addiction.

Andrew’s lawyer held a news conference saying Andrew was not there to personally administer the drug, but he was there to deliver the pills to a local doctor. That’s why cops think it might be more than coincidental Kornfeld and Dr. Schulenberg were there at the same time … when Prince died.

That’s all speculation. But until the autopsy report is released, we can imagine the celebrity doctor trial that may be coming. Big stars seem to feel safer with doctors who will bend the rules to give them what they want. Sometimes that means they die prematurely because their doctor doesn’t want to confront them about their addictions.

UPDATED 2 JUNE 2016:

The preliminary autopsy report has been released showing cause of death as an overdose of Fentanyl, an opioid stronger than morphine or heroin. The report is minimal and gives no hint of what investigators might have found or what legal actions Prince’s doctors may face.
 


Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples OrganizationsDeath by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations

[From Death by HR: How Affirmative Action Cripples Organizations,  available now in Kindle and trade paperback.]

The first review is in: by Elmer T. Jones, author of The Employment Game. Here’s the condensed version; view the entire review here.

Corporate HR Scrambles to Halt Publication of “Death by HR”

Nobody gets a job through HR. The purpose of HR is to protect their parent organization against lawsuits for running afoul of the government’s diversity extortion bureaus. HR kills companies by blanketing industry with onerous gender and race labor compliance rules and forcing companies to hire useless HR staff to process the associated paperwork… a tour de force… carefully explains to CEOs how HR poisons their companies and what steps they may take to marginalize this threat… It is time to turn the tide against this madness, and Death by HR is an important research tool… All CEOs should read this book. If you are a mere worker drone but care about your company, you should forward an anonymous copy to him.

 


More reading on other topics:

Regulation Strangling Innovation: Planes, Trains, and Hyperloop
Captain America and Progressive Infantilization
The Great Progressive Stagnation vs. Dynamism
FDA Wants More Lung Cancer
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Public Employee Unions
Jane Jacobs’ Monstrous Hybrids: Guardians vs Commerce
Death by HR: How Affirmative Action is Crippling America
Death by HR: The End of Merit in Civil Service
Death by HR: History and Practice of Affirmative Action and the EEOC
Civil Service: Woodrow Wilson’s Progressive Dream
Bootleggers and Baptists
Corrupt Feedback Loops: Justice Dept. Extortion
Corrupt Feedback Loops, Goldman Sachs: More Justice Dept. Extortion
Death by HR: The Birth and Evolution of the HR Department
Death by HR: The Simple Model of Project Labor
Levellers and Redistributionists: The Feudal Underpinnings of Socialism
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
Trump World: Looking Backward
Minimum Wage: The Parable of the Ladder
Selective Outrage
Culture Wars: Co-Existence Through Limited Government
Social Justice Warriors, Jihadists, and Neo-Nazis: Constructed Identities
Tuitions Inflated, Product Degraded, Student Debts Unsustainable
The Morality of Glamour

On Affirmative Action and Social Policy:

Affirmative Action: Chinese, Indian-Origin Citizens in Malaysia Oppressed
Affirmative Action: Caste Reservation in India
Diversity Hires: Pressure on High Tech<a
Title IX Totalitarianism is Gender-Neutral
Public Schools in Poor Districts: For Control Not Education
Real-Life “Hunger Games”: Soft Oppression Destroys the Poor
The Social Decay of Black Neighborhoods (And Yours!)
Child Welfare Ideas: Every Child Gets a Government Guardian!
“Income Inequality” Propaganda is Just Disguised Materialism

The greatest hits from SubstrateWars.com (Science Fiction topics):

Fear is the Mindkiller
Mirror Neurons and Irene Gallo
YA Dystopias vs Heinlein et al: Social Justice Warriors Strike Again
Selective Outrage
Sons of Liberty vs. National Front
“Tomorrowland”: Tragic Misfire
The Death of “Wired”: Hugo Awards Edition
Hugos, Sad Puppies 3, and Direct Knowledge
Selective Outrage and Angry Tribes
Men of Honor vs Victim Culture
SFF, Hugos, Curating the Best
“Why Aren’t There More Women Futurists?”
Science Fiction Fandom and SJW warfare

More reading on the military:

US Military: From No Standing Armies to Permanent Global Power
US Military: The Desegration Experience
The VA Scandals: Death by Bureaucracy