The Politics Thread v2

[bhu]

So apparently Cruz's super PAC is refusing to answer why they issued a 500K check to Fiorina...

[StreamOfTheSky]

So apparently Cruz's super PAC is refusing to answer why they issued a 500K check to Fiorina...

I don't know, it's like $19.5 million less than she gets as a golden parachute in return for leaving a company after destroying it, so it can't be that.  But that's her main source of income.  I'm confused...

EDIT: Also, possibly the most vile, evil dipshit (and certainly the dumbest) in the race dropped out today.  Please let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, Scott Walker.  And by ass, I mean you.  The only sad thing about his spectacular failure of a campaign is that the Koch's won't be throwing away hundreds of millions more dollars on it now.
Now he can get back to focusing all his attention on destroying his own state instead of how he'll destroy the country.

[Keldar]

Poor Wisconsin.

[SolEiji]

I have never seen a more punchable face...

This is apparently the face of that pricejacking CEO who increased the price of medicine from $13.50 to $750.  For reference, in Britain it is 66 cents instead, so we're already overcharged.

At the rate of how rapidly assholes are appearing on the planet, we should expect to pass the Chandrasekhar limit of assholes by late 2015/early 2016, collapsing them into an infinitely deep, infinitely dense theoretical asshole from which there is no escape.

[dman11235]

I admit I'm not fully into that story (although I know he did reduce the price a couple days ago....by a small amount...), but I'm not really all that into hating him.  He's taking advantage of a system that encourages this sort of behavior.  That's the free market at work, and it sucks.  From my understanding, that initial price was a pittance compared to a competitor's less effective pill, and he wanted to raise it to obscene amounts to take advantage of something like that.  I do blame him for stopping being a saint if the above is true, and being an a-hole for raising it that much instead of a "decent human being" level of something like $30, or whatever his competitor was doing.

[Solo]

e's taking advantage of a system that encourages this sort of behavior.

You sayin' "don't hate the playa, hate the game?" But what about when the playa shapes the game?

[dman11235]

I'm saying "hate the game, be wary of the player".  he's not really shaping the game too much (unless something else is going on), but yeah, I'm not a fan of him, I don't "hate him" for it.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Backhandedly, it's brilliant.

Identify a Monopoly Med, buy it, JACK IT !!  and ride out the p.r. nightmare.
Make even more money Fubar-ing the Shareholders.

Throw your own Grandma from the train = sheen-esque Winning !!
Everybody knows you're evil, but you're rich so it doesn't matter.

[altpersona]

and Dman makes it to my facebook wall 

[bhu]

I need to find some of you guys on fb.  It'll make up for the occasional fundie going on rants on ym wall...

[Solo]

I would smite them so hard...

[StreamOfTheSky]

Bill Mahr is the O'Reilly of the left. If you wanna get really mad at him, listen to what he has to say about vaccines.

Ok, I was going to just let this go since it's not even about politics, but false equivalencies annoy me ("aiming for the golden mean!" is how the far-right Republicans have dragged legislatures, both Congress and state, to the right for decades now), and after Dman cussed the shit out of Bill Maher for being racist but then didn't mind about the corrupt CEO jacking up the price of a crucial drug people need to live....
If Bill Maher is the O'Reilly of the left, then the left has its shit in pretty damn good order, because the two are not even close to alike in how big of an asshole they are.

I already said he's wrong about that high schooler, he's also wrong on vaccines.  I can understand somewhat why he is skeptical of them, because he doesn't trust the pharma companies that produce them.  And to be fair, they are colossal fucking douche-bags that bribe our Congress to keep drug prices exorbitantly inflated and on multiple occasions severe side-effects (including...death) to their drugs were discovered well after they began selling them to the populace (leading to massive lawsuits, as I'm sure you've seen over the years).  They bribe generic drug companies in order to keep them from releasing much cheaper versions of their drugs even after enough time has passed that it's allowed.
And yes, that asshole CEO is another fine example that pharma companies don't have our collective well being as a major concern.
It is worth noting that his company did not create the drug, they just bought out the company that did and promptly jacked up the price of it, so they could make massive profits.  Not that it'd be acceptable if the company that did the actual research did the same thing either, but that makes it especially despicable and you can't trot out the "it offsets the cost of the research" excuse.

The drug called Daraprim is used to treat parasitic infections that most often occur in those with compromised immune systems due to cancer treatments or HIV infection, and it was sold for $18 per tablet before production rights were acquired by Turing Pharmaceuticals. The company is currently selling the medication for $750 per tablet -- an increase of more than 4,000 percent.

It's also likely (especially considering the greed already displayed) that the reason they're lowering the price isn't because they were swayed by their conscience, but because they had idiotically priced themselves out of the market and had to change course:

Before Shkeil announced the company would lower the price, Schaffner said he was concerned doctors would look to use other drugs for treatment before starting Daraprim.

It's a 62-year old drug.  The reason there was no generic was simply because it was used by so few people, and already cost so little, that it just wasn't worth it.

Going back to Bill, while given the above i can see why he doesn't fucking trust the pharma companies at all, he is still wrong.  Vaccines undeniably work and until hard scientific evidence comes out proving a given vaccine is ineffective or has harmful effects, it's wrong to discredit them.  He's still not as bad as Bill fucking O'Reilly, and it's that shit-faced weasel CEO that should be getting cursed about if anything.

[dman11235]

I did qualify what I said with "I don't know enough about the situation to make a wholly informed opinion" you know.  And I said I still blame the CEO and do not like what he did.  So no, I did mind what he did.  I said I don't really blame him for doing it, I hate the game, and I'm wary of the player in this instance.

And yeah, Bill Maher is a racist.  And he's worse than Bill O'Reilly because he's deceived the left into thinking he's a progressive.  he's not an atheist, he's an Atheist.  He's the same as the religious nut jobs he criticizes, except he gets a pass because of his religion among his fans on the left.  He even makes money off of it just like the people he heavily criticizes.  The only thing he doesn't get from it like them is the tax break, although don't think for a minute he hasn't thought about it.  He'd probably get away with it for a bit too, flavoring it as something like "to prove how awful the religion laws are here" or something.  He shares the same stance on immigration as O'Reilly, with the same levels of racism too.  He is as anti-muslim as O'Reilly, and he's significantly more anti-muslim than he is anti-religion (in fact, he's anti-all religions but his, Atheism, much like all the conservative commentators, he even has a "Judaism" religion he's amicable with, Agnosticism).  He is as anti-science as O'Reilly, just in a different direction a lot of times (same direction some times!).  He's as misogynistic as O'Reilly, and O'Reilly never even made rape jokes, like he has.  A lot.  If O'Reilly made the same jokes he has about race and women, Maher would be ALL OVER him for being a horrible person.  But he never looks in a mirror.  And all of this gets a pass because he's a "liberal"?  He's not a liberal!  He's not a progressive!  He's a horrible human being, and deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as O'Reilly and the rest of the conservative crew.  He's the same person as O'Reilly, just with a different label attached.

As for the drugs cost thing, plenty of better people have taken it on.There's definitely a problem, but it's not the companies.  It's the system.  There's a few people in the business who are corrupt like you're describing, but I'd venture a guess that the majority of researchers, and a majority of the managers and upper echelon aren't bad.  In fact, I've read a lot from an insider's perspective on the industry.  It's not like you're describing.  There's problems, but it's not really a moral bankruptcy thing, more of a symptom of the situation and scenario.

[Solo]

He'd probably get away with it for a bit too, flavoring it as something like "to prove how awful the religion laws are here" or something.

Praise be, praise be.

[Libertad]

Republicans ejaculated over John Boehner's resignation.

[Solo]

it is looking like Boehner walked off the stage flipping two birds and shouting "Fuck y'all!"

[Keldar]

I admit I'm not fully into that story (although I know he did reduce the price a couple days ago....by a small amount...), but I'm not really all that into hating him.  He's taking advantage of a system that encourages this sort of behavior.  That's the free market at work, and it sucks.  From my understanding, that initial price was a pittance compared to a competitor's less effective pill, and he wanted to raise it to obscene amounts to take advantage of something like that.  I do blame him for stopping being a saint if the above is true, and being an a-hole for raising it that much instead of a "decent human being" level of something like $30, or whatever his competitor was doing.

Patents.  Copyright.  Trademark.  How is the market even remotely free?  He's taking advantage of a system established by the government, not his own abilities or fortunes.  He only thought he could get away with it because the government would ensure he wouldn't face any competition. 

The Free Market is as much a fantasy as Communism ever was.  Capitalism only works in the long run with a firm hand at the tiller.  Without it, it'll just devolve into feudalism.  "Conservatives" natter on about the free market as the new form of Divine Right, an exculpatory principle meant to justify their crapulence while their practices consistently destroy the economy.  They love to rail against government regulation, but never seem to notice the sweetheart deals they constantly get from the government.   

[dman11235]

Wow, Walker's deal with the Bucs was even more corrupt than I thought.

@Keldar: The thing about both extremes of the economic spectrum is that they idealize no government control whatsoever.  However, by definition, capitalism needs a government, and communism does not (only one needs capital, AKA money, to be a thing).  Regardless of that, they also require people to be perfect and resources to be freely available.  The world is not perfect, and as such the government exists to fill in the gaps and prevent abuse in the system by imperfect people, and protect other imperfect people from damaging mistakes that they would not otherwise be able to deal with fairly.  Ideally, the government in a capitalistic society exists to make the rules so that all the economic interactions are fair to everyone.  This includes things like copyright and patent laws (lets you succeed based on an idea and prevents others from doing little to no work to out pace you with your idea), regulation (not able to take advantage of people not knowing enough, no 'evil dealings'), and money laws (run the money system to avoid corruption, prevent things like pyramid schemes).  In a communistic society things are similar, but from the other end.

[oslecamo]

"Copyright" and "Patents" aren't really fair at all, in particular when they apply only when it's convenient for rich people.

For example, Disney and a lot of movie companies made their initial fortunes on the back of old widely popular stories. Similarly many medical companies actually send agents to collect traditional medicines from around the world that people were using freely and then slap patents and copyright on top of them.

Luckily we have cases of governments saying "Screw the rules, we don't have money" and just producing the drugs needed to help their own population without paying the ridiculous royalties to the medical corps

They call it piracy to copy knowledge, but nothing is actually being stolen. If your "invention" is so simple that anyone can copy it perfectly, then you don't really have the right to get any royalties for it. In particular in case your plan was to let it stagnate while the patent lasted and prevent further research in the topic for years if not decades.

Freemium businesses show that if you make a really good product, then people will throw money back at you, even if there's clones on the market. No patents means you need to keep a step ahead of the competition, to make sure your product is truly the best in the market.

Humanity as a whole actually benefits when artistic and scientific knowledge are freely shared. We would still be in the stone age in case some smartass back then had decided to patent farming and stuff. The dark ages in Europe happened precisely because the monks decided to hoard all the knowledge and only share it with those willing to put up with a lot of ridiculous stuff. The Dark Ages ended when people started widely sharing knowledge with each other again.

England is actually a step ahead in that all scientific articles published there must be made public by default.

[dman11235]

I did say "ideally".  Ideally those laws are used to protect companies like Disney from straight up taking your idea and posting it as their own.  They are NOT meant to prevent people from modifying your idea, or allow you to exclusively make money off of public domain items, anything like that.  They were initially only for a few years, enough time for you to make a living off of it and then it's open game, the thing expires.  If your invention is so simple that anyone can do it, then it's supposed to not be protected by copyright law or patent law. There's a clause in there for people simultaneous and independently reaching the same idea.  However, this can be abused *coughcoughdisneycoughcough* fairly easily.

Again, these laws are to prevent you from suffering from a competitor literally putting out your product and profiting from it. You are guaranteed compensation for your idea, your invention.  That's the idea.  Otherwise, you could have an idea, some big corporation with more resources than you can learn about it, and then they can just outpace you, selling your thing cheaper and easier.  Initially they lasted only a couple years (I think it was 5?) because this let you get a head start on the competition, letting your name be the one that sells it and gets associated with it, lets you work out the kinks and stuff. Then it's open to the market, everyone have at it.  That's changed, but you still can't really patent common use things (in theory), because they need to be unique and significant.  The laws are a mess now though.  But that's how it's supposed to work.  You aren't supposed to be able to do those things you complain about with these laws.