There are heroes living among us…and Tim Miller, of Dickinson, Texas is one of them. 

After the disappearance and murder of his own little girl, Laura, in 1984, Mr. Miller founded TES to help find missing children on horseback as well as by boat and using sonar equipment.  He has led 730 searches, TES searchers have located 200 live people and 71 bodies.  Every time TES finds someone alive, Laura has NOT died in vain, because her father was moved into action to help others hold their loved ones again.  

If you are interested in supporting TES, please checkout their website at www.texasequusearch.org. 

United We Stand To Pay The Highest Drug Prices So That Drug Companies Can Sell The Same Drug For Less In Other Countries…if you think about it, we actually subsidize people in the rest of the world as to their prescription drugs!!!  (I can almost hear what my Grandmother Mary Nell would say, “We are taking from Peter to pay Paul.”) 

The Medicare prescription drug bill that the Bush Administration and the drug company lobbyists pushed through Congress about 3-1/2 years ago, with the final vote on this bit of legislation occurring at 3:00am. 

The cost at the time was estimated to be about $400 billion over 10 years.  Now, the cost of the program is projected in terms of trillions of dollars. 

It’s quite evident that the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies are the real beneficiaries under the drug bill.  Consumers and retail drug stores will be harmed the most by this legislation.  Please see the report by the Center for Public Integrity on this bill at their website, www.publicintegrity.org.    

Congress is presently considering this bill, please call or write your local Congress man/woman and show support for this proposed Act which would help consumers as well as working class people.  The Act, if passed, would make these types of binding arbitration clauses UNENFORCEABLE. 

This is great news for the consumer, because those types of clauses are usually the “kiss of death” for the consumer, in that arbitrators rule for big business.   

As you may know, every person in the United States who has a credit card, buys a car, signs up for a cell phone plan, or enters into any other kind of consumer transaction has a mandatory arbitration agreement that is binding on them if a dispute arises.  (This means that in the contract you signed, you bargained away your right to file a lawsuit).

Usually, alternative dispute resolution is a good idea.  However, it is not a good idea when there is such a grossly unfair and inadequate meeting of the minds, unequal market power, and thus, no negotiating of the rights involved took place at all.  Further, who pays the arbitrators in question?  Why, big business, in fact the same big business that had you sign the contract in the first place!

It is as true with arbitrators as any other folks, that old saying, “Never bite the hand that feeds you.”  So, arbitrators usually find/rule for big business, because to do otherwise would get them “blackballed.”  

Like latin phrases in the law, the true meaning has be twisted until the true translation is unrecognizeable; so too it is this way with binding arbitration clauses in comsumer transactions — they were meant to help consumers and level the playing field when big business is involved.     

“The very essence of civil liberty certainly consists in the right of every individual to claim protection of the laws whenever he receives an injury.” 

 Marbury v. Madison (1803) (John Marshall)