Monday, August 29, 2016

Did EpiPen Inject Crony Capitalism into Drug Price Gouging?


There has been an uproar over the exposure of Mylan Pharmaceutical raising the cost of EpiPens over 500% since the company acquired rights for the drug in 2007. These anti-anaphalaxis injection devices spiked to a cost of $600 for a two pack, prompting an exasperated mother to exclaim that her family no longer had a college fund but were saving to pay for Epipens.

Outrage of EpiPen Exploitation

After a tremendous hue and cry from the public and calls from many in Congress to investigate EpiPen price gouging, Mylan tried to remedy the medical marketing mess.  First the big Dutch pharmaceutical  announced that low income (families of four making under $97,000) would have no out of pocket costs. When this did not quell the controversy, Mylan later announced that it would produce it's own generic which would cost half as much.

From a public policy perspective, it is worth considering if EpiPen is an example of how crony capitalism injects price gouging.




One of the consequences of Obamacare is that many heath insurance consumers are being forced into high deductible health plans, meant that consumers could not qualify for volume formulary discounts. 

More and more it seems that there is a nexus between requiring Americans under Obamacare into having high deductible insurance and pharmaceutical profits. 

The only remedies seem to be public outrage aimed at the District of Calamity to alleviate outrages or wait for a total collapse of the Obamacare insurance system.


Sam Adams on Liberty

Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Obama's Leverage with Iran?


After months of claiming that the Iran Nuclear Deal was on a separate track to the negotiations with Tehran about the four American hostages, now the Obama White House takes a different tact.




The ironically named Obama White House Spokesman Josh Earnest does not deny that the $400 million in cash to Iran served as leverage to release the hostages.

It is telling that now the Obama White House is wearing weakness with the Islamic Republic of Iran as a badge of honor of keeping the "peace", getting deals done and allegedly saving American taxpayers money. 

Yet it seems that President Obama has things inverted, as hostages and cooperating to participate in farcical Farsi conceits seemed to be levers to get Mr. Obama to acquiesce to dumb demands which America will later regret

Friday, August 19, 2016

Is Mr. Trump Really Mr. Brexit?

As Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump (R-NY) took on a third campaign manager in as many months, he assumed a new image.  On Fox and Friends, Trump anointed himself "Mr. Brexit".


Donald Trump Claims the moniker of Mr. Brexit

A day did not pass before a primary champion of the Brexit Leave movement, UK MEP Daniel Hannan, disputed Trump's claim.


British MEP Daniel Hannan on Donald Trump's claim of being Mr. Brexit


This leads casual observers to wonder if Mr. Trump is really Mr. Brexit.  For those who dig deeper, the question really is what Trump meant.  


  • If Trump sought to cast himself as the "comeback kid" who defied the polls, that may be credible.  
  • If he sought to associate the Trump campaign with the triumph of the working class over the elites, there might be some parallel.  
  • If Trump sought to compare the Leave Movement with his form of populist anti-free trade nationalism, this is a dubious nexus.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Angus King Exemplifies the Artifice of Independent Politicos

Sen. Angus King on Government

Senator Angus King ("I"-ME) sought to be coy about with whom he would caucus when he was elected in 2012.



King's rationale supposedly was that he wanted to get the most for Maine.  So it was understandable that he would align himself with the majority Democrats after the Presidential election.  King played the same fan dance in the run up to the midterm elections, claiming that he might caucus with the GOP if they won. 

 Yet even after the GOP wave victories, King still announced that he would caucus with the Democrats.  Either King does not understand the way things work as a minority member of the Senate or his non-aligned words were of wind. 

Some non-conformists have hailed third party candidacies as it opens up choice and may stop the merging of parties.  However, Angus King's revealing rhetoric on MSNBC's "Morning Joe exemplifies that an independent is at best a subterfuge or more likely indicating lacking the courage to stand up for a label which  he or she will later embody.

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Pat Caddell's Prophetic Predictions Against the Political Class

[Even though Pat Caddell's caustic philippic from CPAC 2013 was targeted at the GOP Establishment Class, the charges of mixed messaging and poor expenditures of paid media still rings true for Donald Trump in 2016]




One of the most striking speeches at CPAC 2013 were Pat Caddell’s remarks on the “Should We Shoot All the Consultants Now?” panel.  Caddell indignantly observed:



When you have the Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee and the political director of the Romney campaign, and their two companies get $152 million at the end of the campaign for the “fantastic” get-out-the-vote program… some of this borders on RICO violations. 
Rush Limbaugh was so impacted by Caddell’s caustic comments that he spent nearly twenty minutes of airtime reading the excepts, because El Rushbo could not get his hands on any audio.  

Serendipitously, Politichicks TV Michelle Moons caught Caddell’s emphatic indictments against Mitt Romney and his reliance on self-centered political consultants on video.  Unfortunately, it was shot at an unfortunate angle and has spotty audio quality.   Still, the damning appraisal deserves to be heard by anyone interested in public policy and good governance, so listen again with earphones in necessary.


With this in mind, this animation attempts to put a better face to Caddell’s prophetic condemnation of the Cocktail Party’s Political Class.   Since Caddell often would make asides during his remarks, the audio was slightly edited to keep focused the corrosive effect of crony capitalism among the GOP establishment.





h/t: Breitbart
h/t: Politichicks

Why Visit No Man's Land?

Mark Twain on Being Informed and Newspapers

Cynics have long lamented that the system is rigged and that all politicians are liars.  Alas, some of the headlines in 2016 confirm this jaundiced world view.  
Mark Twain once quipped: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misniformed.“ With this in mind, why visit “No Man’s Land”?

  • Nearly all polls showed that UK votes would reject Brexit, yet the referendum to leave the European Union won by a large margin.  Were the polls rigged? Was media coverage slanted? Or were there forces which tried to influence the outcome but failed in this instance?


  • Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist-VT)  kept beating Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D-NY) in Democrat Presidential primaries but due to the allocation system and Super Delegates, the preordanined winner became ever closer to her coronation... uh that is nomination.  Were the Democrat primaries preordained?  How much was the winner helped by the Democrat National Committe headed by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL 23rd)


  • Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was investigated for a year and a half by the FBI over her private homebrew email server for official government business.  FBI Director Comey excoriates Hillary Clinton over the many irregularities associated with her email set up , then declines to suggest to the Department of Justice to press charges.  Are there special rules for Washington Establishment insiders? 


  • The Main Stream Media seized upon every seemingly outrageous soundbyte from Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump (R-NY), but rarely gives the full context or hyperbolizes the worst interpretation.  Is all of the press slanted?  Where can ordinary Americans find news?


While America still has vibrant First Amendment freedoms, people need not settle for the official story, especially if it seems sketchy. The Internet allows for corrections of the record, covering news which the Main Stream Media conveniently declines to cover and the sharing of opinion so one can better discern the truth of the matter.

Check your sources.  All reporting has a viewpoint.  Often it is shaped by opinion or emphasis. Once you recognize that fact, it helps you discern between facts and slanted perspectives.  

Challenge your news sources.  Sometimes, timely reportage requires unnamed sources (e.g. “Senior Government Officials”) who must remain shielded. But if news is based totally on anonymous sources or relies on one source, be confident that the “jo-whore-nalist” is intellectually seducing you. 

But on the other hand, don’t believe everything that is published on the Internet. If the news piece can substantiate itself through reference to other reliable sources, one might lend the report more credence.

Assess what is not reported.  This can be hard for someone who is not a news junkie. But an insidious power of the media is not only what they report but what they don’t report. When reporting on a political crime, one party is often immediately reveled whereas those in the other party rarely are immediately identified.  Many liberal Main Stream Media will give short shrift to some stories (such as possible pay-for-play connections between  Hillary’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation) whereas they are covered on other media can be telling.

It may not be convenient to avoid political minefields of corruption and deception but A No Man’s Land may provide a map avoiding the obstacles on our path.