My $25 Experiment Update

Here is the newest journal entry about Christine's Business

Christine is so happy and feels loved alot.
Her business is now big and operating as a clinic now not a drug shop again.
The loan she got helped her alot improve on the stock that now she is having all the necessary requirements of a clinic.

Thanks alot dear lenders and may the Lord God bless you for helping the needy improve on their business like Christine.

Janet

Posted by Janet Alupot from Mbale, Uganda
December 26, 2006, 11:46 pm PST

Please visit kiva.org and make a loan. To follow along with the Christine's business click here.

Christmas at the Emergency Vet...Update.

Molly Dog went to her vet yesterday and got good news, she only has a bladder infection. So she was able to come home and open her presents of doggie toys and rawhide bones. Thank you to everyone who prayed for Molly!

Christmas at the Emergency Vet

Yesterday, Tom (my husband) and I spent most of Christmas evening at the emergency vet with our little girl Molly. She has some sort of kidney infection, and we don't know exactly what kind of bacteria is making her sick.

I have to say spending 4 hours at the vet's office isn't my idea of a great Christmas, but my Molly girl is worth it and hopefully she'll be on the mend soon.



I feel weird asking for people to pray for a dog, but she is more than just a dog to us, she is our family. So please pray for Molly.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

My $25 experiment...Update

I received an email today letting me know that Christine's loan money has been disbursed to her.

Thank you for your loan. It has been disbursed to Christine Akia by Women Initiative to Eradicate Poverty in Uganda. We are excited to watch this business grow. Over the next 9 - 14 months, Women Initiative to Eradicate Poverty will be collecting repayments from this entrepreneur and posting progress updates on the Kiva website.

You can follow along and watch Christine's business grow here. If you would like to make a loan please visit kiva.org.

More updates to come.

Can the Supreme Court make the EPA regulate carbon dioxide

The substantive issue can be framed several different ways, here are two:
1) Does the EPA have the power to regulate carbon dioxide?

2) Is carbon dioxide a pollutant as defined by the Clean Air Act?

However, the more fundamental issue is whether the parties suing the EPA even have the "standing" (or the right) to sue. I'm not going to bore everyone with a dissertation on Administrative law or Constitutional law...but....To have standing a suing party must be able to show there is a specific harm and they (the suing party) where harmed. The difficult argument that the plaintiffs are trying to argue is that EPA's failure to regulate carbon dioxide emissions has harmed their environment (the environment in which the parties live not the environment generally). Basically, the plaintiff is going to have to show that BUT FOR the failure of the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide some harm would not have happened. I think this is a tall order for the plaintiffs, but not impossible.

Even if the Plaintiffs are able to show standing (like I said hard but not impossible). I think it will be hard for the Supreme Court to make the EPA effectively regulate carbon dioxide. The Court is not in business of making regulations, they can tell the EPA to go regulate but the EPA can then make up what ever regulations its wants.

Personally, I think this law suit is mainly a lobbying tool. The best option is to have Congress change the Clean Air Act to explicitly define carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Also, Congress doesn't like it when the Supreme Court steps on its toes. But again this is just my opinion.

I didn't know 'Peace' was divisive....

A Colorado Homeowner's Association is fining a homeowner for putting a Christmas wreath shaped like a peace sign on her house.

The association in this 200-home subdivision 270 miles southwest of Denver has sent a letter to her saying that residents were offended by the sign and the board 'will not allow signs, flags etc. that can be considered divisive.'

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Yesterday...Thanksgiving

Yesterday as I was stuffing myself at both my family's get-together and at my in-laws, I couldn't help but think about a family my sister (a vice-principal here in Indy) told me about this summer. This was the family's first Thanksgiving, and I'm sure they have a lot to be thankful for. This family came from Malawi, and two of their children are at my sister's school (in fact neither child, a boy and girl, had ever been to school). No one in the family speaks English, or at least none did until the kids went to school, and according to my sister they are soaking everything up like little sponges. They are being helped by the surrounding community and I believe have been able to find work and are beginning to hopefully live their American dream. A true Thanksgiving story a move from a refugee camp to Indianapolis.


I will try and follow along with their progress through my sister and post updates. Its really inspiring to hear about brave people like this!

On Thanksgiving

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1691 as a three day "thank you" to the Wampanoag tribe for helping the new colony survive. From there the Thanksgiving tradition spread to the other colonies, but didn't have a specific day where everyone gave thanks until 1789 when George Washington Proclaimed November 26 as a day of Thanksgiving. This date didn't really catch on, and Thanksgiving continued to be celebrated on various days through out the different states. In 1863, President Lincoln issued a proclamation calling on all Americans to give thanks on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving had another change in 1939 when FDR moved if forward by two weeks, but this didn't stick. Because some states celebrated the original date (Lincoln's date) and some celebrated the new, it was decided to change Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of each year.

These are some facts about how Americans ended up with Thanksgiving. Here are some other facts to think about as we sit down to our Thanksgiving meals, whether they be with the traditional turkey, tofurky, or even better special K loaf.

1) Tomorrow over 1,000 people will be killed in Darfur
2) Tomorrow 16,000 children will die from hunger related causes
3) Tomorrow 13.9 million children in the United States will go hungry

So tomorrow enjoy your turkey, tofurky, special K loaf etc. and give thanks for what you have.

Is a Burrito a Sandwich...our Judicial System hard at Work

I can't believe this issue was not settled out of court...it wouldn't have been an issue if Qdoba wasn't so popular.

In Massachusetts a shopping mall (White City Shopping Center) had a lease agreement with Panera Bread, and this agreement included a provision that restricted the mall from renting to a competing sandwich shop. The mall then wanted to lease space to Qdoba, and of course the agreement didn't define what a sandwich is.

Because the contract failed to define 'sandwich' the issue falls to the hands of the judicial system. Of course during litigation lots of expert witnesses were called to define a sandwich, but the final call came from a judge (does a judge really know what is and is not a sandwich?). Judge Locke's decision came down to the fact that a sandwich is usually two pieces of bread versus one tortilla.

My question and my evidence professor's is then...what is a wrap? I also know that I've refered to Qdoba as the Mexican food version of subway.




Honestly, I'm not going to rip on this being a waste of judicial time (it really kind of is) or that its frivolous litigation (its really not...it means a lot of money to both organizations), I am going to say lawyers and even those entering into contracts really should look at the terms of those contracts and should make sure that even the most basic terms are defined (at least the terms that come down to your core business...um like what your basic product is!). Drafting, Drafting, Drafting!

Big PhRMA is at it again

I guess the saying "you get what you pay for," is really true. Yesterday Oxfam America came out with one of its great Briefing Papers entitled Patents vs. Patients.

Last year I wrote a Student Note (its really long and boring but here is the link if you want to read it) for my Law Review looking at how the US is pressuring smaller, underdeveloped countries into adopting TRIPS-Plus intellectual property laws. The US uses the Trade Representative (USTR) to implement these policies. A couple of the tools the USTR uses to accomplish this are 1) the use of 'Section 301' watch lists and 2) Bi-lateral trade agreements. I'll address the later first. These bi-lateral trade agreements are done just between the US and the target country, completely by-passing the WTO. Most of the time the target country desparetly needs the agreement to break into the US market. The USTR knows how valuable the US market place is and can totally shut out smaller developing countries. Because of the pharamceutical industries massive lobbying effort and the number of former pharamceutical executives now advising the USTR, the USTR always includes as part of a FTA provisions requiring the target country to adopt very strict IP laws. This can restrict a countries rights under the Doha Agreement (which allows a country to basically obtain a compulsory license when facing a public health emergency). The Section 301 watch lists are another way the USTR pressures countries to adopt IP laws more restrictive than TRIPS or face sanctions for the US.

Now it appears that the pharmaceutical industry isn't happy with the results they have gotten from this process in India. India did change its IP laws to conform with TRIPS, and now Novartis is sueing because they aren't happy with those laws. The problem is that most of Africa is facing a public health crisis with AIDS, however those countries don't have the capacity to manufacture their own drugs so they look to countries like India to get affordable drugs. So if Novartis wins the India export industry to Africa might be shut off. Thereby further shutting off use of the already under used Doha Agreement.

My party has been hijacked....

So I've had a week to think about last Tuesday's election (I know that's an eternity in blogotime) and I think its pretty darn amazing. The country let it be known that we aren't happy. There will be some changes (hopefully for the better...only time will tell), but these changes are happening calmly and orderly, there are no tanks in the streets and civil war has not broken out! We do really live in a great nation...no matter how misguided our leaders (and I'm talking about both sides of aisle) can be at times.

Okay...that being said...I am going to come out...I'm a Republican (or at least I thought I was). I'm actually happy about the change in Congress and I voted for more Democrats than Republicans, but what happened to my party? What happened to Republicans being the party of spending wisely, and keeping Big Brother out of our lives? When did we become the party of legislating morality or spending Billions upon Billions on a war that is doing nothing more than putting our brave men and women in uniform in harms way and making our country less safe? Did we learn nothing from Vietnam? Maybe if our Commander-in-Chief had actually gone to Vietnam he would've thought twice before starting this war.

So bring on something new and for the Republicans, they better hope Rudy wins the nomination for president. :)

Okay...I'm stepping down from my soap box now.

My $25 experiment...Does Micro Credit Work?

Today I became an international investor, I invested a whopping $25 in Christine Akia's health care business. Christine is a nurse in Mbale, Uganda she is seeking a loan of $600 to improve her clinic. Read more about Christine and her business here.

What is Micro Credit? Is Micro Credit the answer? Does it work, and can my $25 make a difference?

What is Micro Credit?

I was first introduced to the idea of micro credit when I was editing a fellow student's Indiana International & Comparative Law Review article. I thought the idea of micro credit was very interesting but I totally disagreed with the conclusion the student made that this concept could work here in the US. The basic idea is that investors loan "small" sums of money to entrepreneurs in poverty stricken areas of the world at a low/favorable interest rate. Most of the people in these extremely impoverished countries have very few financing options. Most of the time their only option to borrow money is to go to the equivalent of a "loan shark."

The concept of micro credit was given a start by Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. For his efforts in promoting and developing Socially Responsible Investing, Professor Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize.

"The one message that we are trying to promote all the time, that poverty in the world is an artificial creation," said Professor Yunus told the Nobel Committee upon learning he had won the Prize. "It doesn't belong to human civilization, and we can change that, we can make people come out of poverty and have the real state of affairs."

To read more about Professor Yunus and Microfinance click here.

Recently, Frontline/World devoted a segment to Microfinance and Micro Credit. To see the video and read the story click here.

My $25

After watching the Frontline/World segment, reading about extreme poverty and getting involved with the ONE campaign, I thought I'd try my hand at being a lender and see if my little bit would really make a difference. I choose to lend through Kiva.org, because they were the group profiled in the Frontline segment. To date I believe Kiva has a 100% loan repayment rate. If this really works this gives westerners an opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of those borrowing the money. It also empowers the entrepreneurs because its not charity, its investors, investing in good ideas. It also gets money directly into the hands of those who need it instead of risking the possibility of corrupt government officials getting a share of the money.

As of this post Christine's loan is already 100% funded, I will post updates on how she is doing with the money as I get them and we will see if this can be one more tool in this fight against extreme poverty.

Vote Vote Vote!!!!!

Tomorrow is a big day! Its more important than most people think, its the day where we (the people) can exercise our right to choose those who govern us.

In the last mid-term election the voter turn out was aweful, only 37% of the population voted. This election is pivotal, its a chance for us to make our views known. Its our chance to either give our stamp of approval for what is going on in government OR its a chance for us to show our displeasure with what is happening.

Most people in the world don't have this opportunity, and its sad to see the majority of Americans not voting and taking this right for granted.

I Hit the Lottery

When I was 16 I was diagnosed with a neurological tumor the size of a grape fruit in my chest. Had it not been caught it would have continued to grow and would've eventually filled my entire chest cavity! But my doctor did find it and after the inconvinence of having surgery (and some minor complications) the tumor is gone and has not returned. Had I not been born in the US or a western country, the likelihood of the tumor ever being diagnosed would've been nil. And even if the tumor was diagnosed the likelihood of having been able to actually have surgery to remove it would've been even smaller. So when you think about it I hit the lottery...I was given the best care available on the planet!

Most people on the planet don't have access to even basic health care! Think about the last time you ran out to immediate care because of a sore throat, or a sinus infection, its easy for us living in this great country to see a doctor (and we should take advantage of these opportunities) but just think about how hard life would be if that wonderful healthcare system no longer existed.
I'm not saying that we should feel bad or guilty for our lot in life, but we can make a difference for those who don't have adequate healthcare. Join ONE and sign the declaration. http://www.one.org/