Month: January 2013

Boehner told Reid to go Cheney Himself

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Republicans, such classy people:

House Speaker John Boehner couldn’t hold back when he spotted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the White House lobby last Friday.

It was only a few days before the nation would go over the fiscal cliff, no bipartisan agreement was in sight, and Reid had just publicly accused Boehner of running a “dictatorship” in the House and caring more about holding onto his gavel than striking a deal.

“Go f— yourself,” Boehner sniped as he pointed his finger at Reid, according to multiple sources present.

Reid, a bit startled, replied: “What are you talking about?”

Boehner repeated: “Go f— yourself.”

The harsh exchange just a few steps from the Oval Office — which Boehner later bragged about to fellow Republicans — was only one episode in nearly two months of high-stakes negotiations laced with distrust, miscommunication, false starts and yelling matches as Washington struggled to ward off $500 billion in tax hikes and spending cuts.

Seriously, this sort of childish sh%$ is not the mark of someone who you can negotiate with in good faith.

Saying it in the middle of a contentious meeting is one thing, but this was a “drive by” f%$# you, and then he bragged about it to colleagues.

This is College Republican bullsh%$, and it is an indication of just how unserious the Republican leadership is about doing their jobs.

I experienced this when I was in the SGA Senate at UMass, and dealt with people who later figured in the Abramhoff, and they freuently behaved the same way, but they were in their early 20s, and it was the student senate.

That is why this deal is so bad.  Barack Obama just gave the keys to Eddie Haskell, and this does not bode well.

My Heart So Doesn’t Break For John Boehner

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I understand where he is coming from on Hurricane Sandy.

The Teabagger part of his caucus sees New York as nothing but n***ers, k*kes, and f***ots, and he did not want to try to pass a bill sending New York any money before he is reelected , because he has a whole sh%$-mess of folks who think that aid to a storm ravaged New York is aid to the enemy.

So, he decided not to bring up any sort of aid for the damage Sandy this session.

Bad move, dude.

He ignited a bipartisan sh%$-storm.

Republican stalwart, and supporter of lightly complected terrorists Peter King went on TV and suggested that people from the area should stop making political contributions to Republicans.

And then New Jersey Governor Chris “Does Not Play Well With Others” Christie said that Boehner had lied to him about the bill being on the agenda and that he refused to take his calls, and that Boehner’s chief rival, Eric Cantor, had tried to help on this.

So Boehner caved, and there will be a vote on Sandy relief on Friday for $9 billion in relief, and a vote for an additional $51 billion on January 15.

Sucks to be him.

Heh.

I am Going to Miss Spitzer’s Show

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They just got sold to Al Jazeera, and they will be replacing the lineup with one of their own:

It looks as if Current TV will soon be a thing of the past. Al Jazeera, the Doha, Qatar-based news broadcaster, has agreed to acquire the seven-year-old cable channel from its co-founders, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt.

Hyatt announced the sale in a memo to employees Wednesday evening, confirming reports in The New York Times and the Hollywood Reporter that a deal was in the works.

“When considering the several suitors who were interested in acquiring Current, it became clear to us that Al Jazeera was founded with the same goals we had for Current,” Hyatt wrote. “Al Jazeera, like Current, believes that facts and truth lead to a better understanding of the world around us.”

Al Jazeera plans to scrap Current’s programming lineup and brand, which never caught on with a critical mass of viewers, and use the channel’s subscriber base of 60 million households as the basis for a new network. A Current spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the reports.

I understand why the deal was made: Current has access to over 100 million eyes, Al Jazeera just a fraction of that, because of our culture of bigotry and xenophobia adopted following 911.

Time Warner has already canceled their contract on the change of ownership clause, but they already carry Al Jazzera, so it might just be that they don’t want to give them two channels.

Best Reason for Britain to Leave the EU

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The Banksters are terrified of the idea:

Senior banking and business figures spoken to by The Sunday Telegraph have revealed growing disquiet at Government plans for a referendum where one option could be an exit from the EU.

One senior banking executive said: “The whole issue has the potential to be very destabilising for the City.

“It risks playing with the future of the British economy for the next 30 years.”

We need to understand that big finance is not about what should be its primary function, getting capital to from those who want to invest it to those who need it, but it is about sitting athwart the economy and extracting rents.

Any economy that prioritizes shrinking and stigmatizing the big bankers will do better than one (like ours, see Obama/Geithner) that prioritizes the the “health of the existing financial system.”

The banksters are a cancer than need to be excised from our economy.

Krugman is Right

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But it turns out that they didn’t even wait for any actual budget deal. Here’s Marco Rubio yesterday (via Ezra Klein):

The first part is, of course, simply a lie: numerous reports tell us that McConnell did in fact make precisely that demand. And let’s remember this when Rubio makes his run for the White House: we already know that he’s an unprincipled liar. But anyway, you see how it will go — and why the whole notion of settling matters fiscal with a Grand Bargain was always crazy. You can’t make big deals with a totally untrustworthy negotiating partner.

It does not make sense to negotiate with terrorists, but that meant nothing to Democrats, who went 10:1 for the bill, while the Republicans went nearly 2:1 against.

They will be seeing ads from ‘Phants about this within weeks.

To paraphrase a Roman general whose name I forget about the Germanic tribes, Republicans are completely trustworthy only for so long as you have your boot on their neck.

Particularly in the House, it should have been made clear that this would only pass if the Republicans delivered at least 150 votes.

You don’t just pass the bill, you shame them.

If you want to cut a deal with these folks, you

Why We Need to Kill Big Pharma, Part LVXXI

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So, a company buys the rights to a drug for 100 Grand, and takes the price of a vial from $50 to $28,000:

THE doctor was dumbfounded: a drug that used to cost $50 was now selling for $28,000 for a 5-milliliter vial.

The physician, Dr. Ladislas Lazaro IV, remembered occasionally prescribing this anti-inflammatory, named H.P. Acthar Gel, for gout back in the early 1990s. Then the drug seemed to fade from view. Dr. Lazaro had all but forgotten about it, until a sales representative from a company called Questcor Pharmaceuticals appeared at his office and suggested that he try it for various rheumatologic conditions.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Dr. Lazaro, a rheumatologist in Lafayette, La., says of the price increase.

How the price of this drug rose so far, so fast is a story for these troubled times in American health care — a tale of aggressive marketing, questionable medicine and, not least, out-of-control costs. At the center of it is Questcor, which turned the once-obscure Acthar into a hugely profitable wonder drug and itself into one of Wall Street’s highest fliers.

At least until recently, that is. Now some doctors, insurance companies and investors are beginning to have doubts about whether the drug is really any better than much cheaper alternatives. Short-sellers have written scathing criticisms of the company, questioning its marketing tactics and predicting that its shareholders are highly vulnerable.

………

But Questcor did almost no research or development to bring Acthar to market, merely buying the rights to the drug from its previous owner for $100,000 in 2001. And while the manufacturing of Acthar is complex, it accounts for only about 1 cent of every dollar that Questcor charges for the drug.

Moreover, the tiny “orphan” market soon became much bigger. Before long, Questcor began marketing the drug for multiple sclerosis, nephrotic syndrome and rheumatologic conditions, even though there is little evidence that Acthar is more effective for those other conditions than alternatives that are far cheaper. And the company did so without being required to prove that the drug actually works. That is because Acthar was approved for use in 1952, before the Food and Drug Administration required clinical trials to show a drug is effective for a particular disease. Acthar is essentially grandfathered in.

How the F%$# does a drug that was approved for use in 1952 remain under IP protection?

I’m increasingly convinced that our current IP regime is an iron triangle between rent-seekers who produce nothing of value, politicians who take their campaign donations, and the the rest of us, who provide the ill-gotten gains that the rent-seekers use to protect their business models.

More Equal than Others

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The latest investment dodge, leveraging green cards for investment capital:

At this remote outpost by the Canadian border, Bill Stenger is overseeing what he says is the biggest economic development project that Vermont has ever seen.

He is expanding the Jay Peak ski resort, which he co-owns, but he is also building a biomedical research firm and a window manufacturing plant, extending the runway at the local airport and rehabilitating much of the nearby town of Newport, where he lives. There, he is developing the waterfront, adding the town’s first hotel and a conference center and rebuilding an entire downtown block. He is also creating what he says is the largest indoor mountain bike park in the world and a state-of-the art tennis center.

The price tag for the entire project, which Mr. Stenger says will create 10,000 direct and indirect jobs over several years, is $865 million.

But even more unusual than the size of the undertaking is the method by which Mr. Stenger and his business partner, Ariel Quiros, are financing it. They have tapped into a federal program that gives green cards, or permanent residency, to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in an American business — the reward for the investment is a chance at United States citizenship.

(emphasis mine)

It inevitable that any government program that “incentivises” the wealthy is an invitation to corruption and abuse.

Let’s be clear here:  People who are investing are not interested in the return that they can get, they are buying a green card.

The whole Calvinist dichotomy that wealth is synonymous with virtue that the Pilgrims brought over is really completely unbounded in reality.