Eideard

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable.

Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy, the folks call her Mrs. Anderson, and the children Milly, Jane, and Grundy go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee.
The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master.

Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

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…The Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment. Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices…

The Times has found that doctors who take money from drug makers often practice medicine differently from those who do not and that they are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways, such as prescribing powerful antipsychotic medicines for children.

Under the new standards, if a company has just one product covered by Medicare or Medicaid, it will have to disclose all its payments to doctors other than its own employees. The federal government will post the payment data on a Web site where it will be available to the public.

Manufacturers of prescription drugs and devices will have to report if they pay a doctor to help develop, assess and promote new products…Royalty payments to doctors, for inventions or discoveries, and payments to teaching hospitals for research or other activities will also have to be reported…

Allan J. Coukell, a pharmacist and consumer advocate at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said: “Patients want to know they are getting treatment based on medical evidence, not a lunch or a financial relationship. They want to know if their doctor has a financial relationship with a pharmaceutical company, but they are often uncomfortable asking the doctor directly…”

Although the Congressional Budget Office does not predict immediate savings, it has said that, “over time, disclosure has the potential to reduce spending,” by reducing instances of overprescribing.

The law also requires drug and device companies to report the amount of “any ownership or investment interest” held by doctors or their immediate family members, other than holdings of publicly traded stocks.

The administration intends to apply the same disclosure requirements to doctor-owned companies that distribute medical devices. Such companies allow doctors to benefit financially from sales of devices they use in surgery.

The same political Sluggos who refused to support oversight of investment banks and sleazy sub-prime investments want us to presume that the ethics missing from Wall Street – are completely in place among millionaire doctors. Frankly, if you walk through their country clubs, I think you would have a hard time telling one from the other. Maybe the doctors have cleaner hands because it’s required of their craft.

But, corporate payoffs and kickbacks are not the sort of business practices that have ever inspired confidence in honesty in my lifetime.

Prearations for a lynching fair trial in Pakistan

Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor accused of murdering two men in Lahore, Pakistan, has been released after the families to the two men he killed were given “blood money” and the case was dropped, Pakistani officials said.

While Davis, who had earlier admitted to the killings but said he was acting in “self-defence”, was indicted for the murders earlier on Wednesday, Rana Sanaullah, the Punjab law minister, said he was immediately pardoned by the families of the victims in exchange for compensation or “blood money”.

The practice of pardoning those accused of murder under such an arrangement is permitted under Pakistani law…

The amount of money agreed to has not been made clear.

Davis had been arrested on January 27, after having killed the two men on a street in Lahore. He said that the two men were attempting to rob him, and that he acted in self-defence.

Chaudhry Mushtaq, superintendent at Kot Lakhpat jail, said Davis left the jail with US consulate officials…

Law, reason, accepted judicial procedures in Pakistan don’t mean a whole boatload to modern nations. Money is more important than justice. Clear and definitive.

Not that it isn’t disproportionately higher in Western esteem. But, a little subtlety might be nice. Har.

The confusion is understandable, right?

The imposter who posed as a Taliban leader to open peace negotiations with Kabul was put forward by British agents who failed to note he was several inches shorter than the man he was impersonating.

The man masquerading as Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was paid a six figure sum and was flown three times to secret meetings with Nato and Afghan representatives before he was rumbled.

Afghan intelligence agents later determined he was a shopkeeper from the Pakistani city of Quetta.

A senior aide to Hamid Karzai said the man had been recommended by the British.

Mohammad Umer Daudzai, Mr Karzai’s chief of staff, said British officials brought the impostor to meet the president in July or August, where he was spotted as a fraud. Senior American officials confirmed the impostor was “the Brits’ guy”.

The British embassy in Kabul declined to comment.

Har! What could they say?

We noted this tale earlier this week; but, accepting a ringer, paying him big bucks to “negotiate” – and failing to notice he was a shrimp compared to the real deal. Laughable.

Three of the top four U.S. mobile service providers — Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile USA — are working together to build a network that would let consumers pay for goods with their phones.

Their Isis joint venture, which was formally announced on Tuesday, plans to take market share from dominant payment networks Visa and MasterCard, which currently process most U.S. credit and debit card payments. Sources told Reuters on Monday that an announcement was imminent.

Isis said the network would use Discover Financial Services’ national payment network at its roughly 7 million U.S. merchant partners and that Barclaycard U.S., a unit of Barclays Plc is expected to be the first lender on the network to offer mobile payment products.

“We’re a competitive alternative” to Visa and MasterCard, Isis CEO Michael Abbott told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. Abbott, a former GE Capital credit cards executive, was named chief executive of the venture…

The idea behind mobile payments is for consumers to be able to wave their phone at a machine to pay for items such as train tickets, potentially eliminating the need to carry a wallet…

The venture is a coup for Discover, the fourth-place U.S. processing network, which is trying to take market share after long lagging Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

This already rocks in Japan. We all know the single most effective way for this to catch on in the United States. It’s ging to have to save someone some money.

Don’t expect to see this in anything smaller than a big box store for a number of months.