Congratulations Chicago, you are the most corrupt city in the nation. There is so much corruption, in fact, that the city does not have enough lawyers to deal with it all. The federal government is investigating a scandal that implicates just about every city official, and the most prestigious names in the city have already retained the big-name lawyers to protect themselves. Mayor Daley, member of one of the most infamously corrupt families in the country, has retained Vince Connelly, a lawyer in the cities biggest law firm, Mayer Brown Rowe and Maw. The mayor has not been accused of any wrongdoing, but he has been questioned by federal investigators, who I'm sure suspect that a Daley must be hiding something.

Daley's father was mayor of Chicago in the 1960s, and was rumored to have pulled some strings with his close mob connections to ensure a Kennedy victory in the 1960 presidential election. He also "released the dogs" on the left-wing democrats at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where protestors were brutally beaten by Chicago police officers as Daley looked on.
Are scandals creating a lawyer shortage?

At what point does a moral obligation to help those in need overcome patent law obedience? Taiwan has decided that enough is enough. They tried to negotiate a deal with Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, regarding the use of Tamiflu, which is the best available anti-viral drug for fighting bird flu. Roche, in what many might describe as a clear attempt to exploit the immediacy of the situation, stuck to its patents and refused to allow generic copies. Taiwan eventually realized that as a country, they make the laws, and the government can violate those laws at will. They are not making their own version of Tamiflu, and they are making it cheaper and faster than Roche.

I've never been a big fan of the way the drug industry does business. They complain that research and development costs are so high they have to charge high prices. I think they are just pulling the wool over our ignorant eyes. Sure R&D costs "millions of dollars," and that seems like a lot of money to Joe Sixpack, but they are making billions of dollars every year. The whole industry is a failure in the capitalist system, and its where many communist countries are beating the United States. If the government funded drug development there would still be high R&D costs, and bureaucracy would take its share, but the consumer would not get gouged on the open market. Where a pill might now cost $1 per pill to produce (including R&D costs) and cost $5 per pill in our open market, the government pill might cost $1.50 per pill, but it would sell for $2 per pill on the open market, because the government would not be trying to suck every last dollar out of us just because we are willing to pay it.

I decided to post this in the legal blog as opposed to political blog or business blog, because I think international law is the most important part of this story. Is it ok for a country to ignore laws that are corrupt by nature in an attempt to protect the health of its citizens?
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Taiwan to ignore flu drug patent