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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:
The antivaxxers on the right think getting the vaccine is weak and gay, they fantasize that something will come along to kill all liberals through their own folly and they want the vaccine to be that thing since it's been politicized into a thing that liberals do. They don't want to hear about how they should get a booster: they want to hear about how smart and right they are for not getting one and how the libs are all going to die from killer mRNA activation signals from 5G towers any day now.
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Dec 20, 2021 20:22
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VitalSigns posted:Wild reasoning. White collar crime is almost never punished, a CEO getting a golden parachute proves almost nothing. Obama's attorney general even wrote a memo saying that crime by big corporations should not be punished because of the consequences for shareholder value. The Intercept story isn't about anything criminal, though. It is entirely a civil/ethics issue. Mylan already controlled 96% of the epipen market and was partnered with Adrenaclick in the process. Pfizer bought Adrenaclick and decided to just continue the partnership with Mylan and scrap their competitor product because it had been 3 years and only gotten 4% market share. Pfizer decided it could make more money by just not investing in its epipen product anymore and picking up the Adrenaclick deal. There's a strong argument that it could be an anti-trust issue with Adrenaclick investors or consumers who were part of managed care, but there isn't any criminal liability for a company. It's not criminal behavior in other countries either, but the U.S. has insanely long market exclusivity periods for pharmaceuticals and biologics that allow 96% market share for longer than companies are allowed to do it in other countries. The U.S. actually has shorter patent periods for pharmaceuticals than several other major companies, but the U.S. has longer market exclusivity times and the ability for certain drugs to have their market exclusivity times and patents extended. U.S. drug law is very friendly to pharmaceutical companies and if nobody else wants to invest billions to challenge you, then you can legally control 96% of the market and raise prices to whatever you want. It turns out that there aren't many people or companies who want to invest billions to compete when they can just wait 20 years and release a generic version that cost nothing to research. It happens in other countries too, but the U.S. allows it to happen for much longer and that is how you end up with egregious cases like Mylan. The exclusivity period is over now and there are generic epipens available, but Mylan's brand is still overwhelmingly the dominant brand. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 20:28
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Speaking of prescription drugs, some appalling results from a new KFF survey:    
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Dec 20, 2021 20:36
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I'm not a lawyer so I'm willing to believe it's possible nobody at Mylan committed any crimes at all, but I'm not going to be convinced by arguments that CEOs got very nice golden parachutes so they must not have done anything wrong, and after the civil suit revealed proof of price-fixing and monopolistic practices I'm not going to be satisfied by the lack of investigation because there's plenty of examples of wealthy corporations committing obvious crimes and the DoJ and SEC refusing to investigate or doing some cursory investigation and clearing them in 5 seconds. Every time someone badgered the SEC into investigating Madoff they just dropped in, asked "hey you wouldn't break the law would you sir my liege Mr Madoff your grace sir" and he couldn't believe they didn't ask to see his books which would have exposed the fraud in 5 seconds. And he was committing the only wealthy-person crime the government cares about anymore (robbing other wealthy people)
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Dec 20, 2021 20:36
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/12/20/manchin-biden-child-tax-credit/quote:Manchin’s private offer to Biden included pre-k, climate money, Obamacare — but excluded child benefit Citation to three people and the framing of the breakdown make it likely this is people from the admin revealing the details; not clear this is coordinated from above, as it's the kind of material that WaPo would put a lot of resources into getting to first.
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Dec 20, 2021 20:41
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This will probably blow up, but is currently making rounds locally. It turns out the prosecutor in the I-70 truck driver case, who was recently sentenced to 110 years in prison, is a giant piece of poo poo. https://twitter.com/sbrown_law/status/1472996662779936770 Why are people in the justice system so loving callous?
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Dec 20, 2021 20:47
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Willa Rogers posted:Speaking of prescription drugs, some appalling results from a new KFF survey: The sad thing is that none of that is really new. That has been the case for a long time. The "cut pill in half/skip doses/not filled a prescription" number is actually a lot lower than the usual 30-40% that gets published a lot. The one thing I want to know is how are there so many people where a 30 cent rise in the price is gas is causing more strain on their budgets than increases in rent/mortgage, utilities, food, prescription drugs, and health insurance? I know it is a self-assessment, so you can't take it 100% literally, but I drive just slightly under the national average in a month in a car that gets slightly less than average fuel economy and a 30 cent increase in the price of gas is equivalent to ~$4.20 increased cost per week and ~$16.80 per month. Surely, food/rent/health insurance/pharmaceuticals/utilities for the average American are causing more of a stress than that?
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Dec 20, 2021 20:52
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:This will probably blow up, but is currently making rounds locally. Humans naturally dehumanize people in jobs like that and the field rewards those who are better at dehumanizing. Like how is you have ever worked in a call center everyone who calls is just some voice except your job is life and death.
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Dec 20, 2021 20:53
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:This will probably blow up, but is currently making rounds locally. Because it's not about justice: it's about maintaining white supremacist and class superiority order of the state
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Dec 20, 2021 20:54
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VitalSigns posted:Wild reasoning. White collar crime is almost never punished, a CEO getting a golden parachute proves almost nothing. Obama's attorney general even wrote a memo saying that crime by big corporations should not be punished because of the consequences for shareholder value. i mean, mylan got hit with a doj investigation over medicaid payments related to epipens and was forced to fork over $300m. something can be illegal but that doesn't mean the ceo is personally, criminally liable Willa Rogers posted:Sounds like we need to have the federal government set price controls on prescription drugs, rather than proposing stuff like picking 10 cancer drugs & starting "discussions" for their cost controls in a few years, or having the feds subsidize insulin to its manufacturers, no matter what its price. sounds good to me! price controls on pharmaceuticals has been fantastically successful worldwide and our failure to do so as well is one of the biggest drivers of healthcare costs.
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Dec 20, 2021 21:00
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JonathonSpectre posted:It's so incompetent and clownshoes I've actually become suspicious that all this talk about "managed opposition" might actually be true. It basically depends upon how you define "controlled opposition." My only issue with that terminology is that it implies that Republicans are in control and calling the shots, when in reality it's more that our country just has a single major political faction that encompasses both Republican and Democratic politicians (since there are a bunch of very powerful/rich people who are Democrats as well). The best way to think of it is that our political parties resemble political factions among the wealthy. Democrats more or less represent international/finance capital while Republicans represent domestic industry and localized capital (like someone who owns a business in America). Obviously there are individual exceptions (often due to the culture war), but broadly speaking this is the case. And in both cases there's some need to appeal to the "middle class" (which in practice is like the top ~20%) for votes, but this is mostly handled by the culture war and mass media. So you might sometimes have the Democratic faction of the wealthy support minor redistribution, but the entire bipartisan consensus is against anything that might truly alter existing power relationships. So the status quo of "the working class being exploited to benefit the rich" will always be supported by both parties and both parties will be unwilling to take action that would upset any existing wealthy stakeholders. And the Democratic wealthy are also not exactly going to care much about the aforementioned minor redistribution (even if they technically support it), so they're not going to put up a big fight if the Republican faction denies them that. The most important thing here is that there's a hard line in the sand that will not be crossed by either US political party, and that line in the sand is far short of anything remotely resembling a fair, equitable, non-murderous society. This isn't to say they won't sometimes differ in ways that matter (since differences in opinions among the wealthy can still have consequences for normal people), but it's important to not forget that neither of the major US political parties can actually be a vehicle for achieving most left-wing goals. And even for those things that matter, the political parties still won't really care that much. Like Democrats are better on abortion, an issue that obviously matters, but they don't really care much if abortion is made illegal in red states, since they usually live in blue states (or can easily travel to them). They would probably prefer it not happen, but also aren't exactly going to put up a big fight if it does. Some people might say things like "if only you removed Manchin/etc Democrats could do good things," but this is based on blind trust without any historical basis - there's no actual precedent from basically the 70s onward (which encompasses basically everyone who is currently in politics) of the Democrats actually doing this. For an individual situation, their reasoning makes sense; you'd default to assuming that people mean what they say. But over the course of many decades it makes far more sense to assume that most of the party doesn't actually intend to do these things. If Dems got a couple new Senators, you'd just see a couple new Senators join Manchin (like Mark Warner or Chris Coons or something). This also goes a long way towards explaining why they aren't eager to pass meaningful voting rights legislation - it becomes a lot harder to justify inaction if they have a larger majority. Fame Douglas posted:Jesus Christ, just admit you wrote some cringeworthy posts and got owned, you don't need to perpetuate this embarrassment. Part of making condescending posts is that you adopt the risk of getting owned. I already have my "got owned to death" will written up for just such an occasion.
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Dec 20, 2021 21:03
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https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1473003746510745602 if that's accurate, they probably should have taken this deal. although i suppose they didn't expect manchin to subsequently torpedo everything. still a screw-up as they could have passed this bill and then attempted a standalone ctc extension
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Dec 20, 2021 21:11
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Heck Yes! Loam! posted:Why are people in the justice system so loving callous?
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Dec 20, 2021 21:15
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The sad thing is that none of that is really new. That has been the case for a long time. The "cut pill in half/skip doses/not filled a prescription" number is actually a lot lower than the usual 30-40% that gets published a lot. As you said yourself: Crippling medical & pharma costs are nothing new, and it's been the case for a long time.  It doesn't make the survey results any less appalling, nor do a few drops in the hurt-needle percentages make it any better. It's just a few more data points as to why the "drug controls" in BBB are an utter joke, and why it won't convince voters that the pain in their lives (figurative as well as literal, in this instance) will change even if some form of the bill passes. I don't buy into your frame that it's only gas prices with which people are concerned; food prices are definitely on consumers' radar, and the winter's only getting started as far as heating prices. Mortgage rates haven't gone on non-ARMs, and rental prices will only hit those looking for new housing & renting. So yes: Surely those things are causing more stress than gasoline, minus your question mark.
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Dec 20, 2021 21:20
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:The sad thing is that none of that is really new. That has been the case for a long time. The "cut pill in half/skip doses/not filled a prescription" number is actually a lot lower than the usual 30-40% that gets published a lot. I mean, here’s the thing about all those “is [x] causing you financial hardship” polls - if the thing has increased in price, and you are generally struggling with your finances, then yes, the increase in price is causing you financial hardship. What you basically end up getting, when you measure these things with polling, is a measure of perceived economic precarity, no matter what type of price increase you’re supposedly measuring the impact - so these polls are going to end up between 30 and 50 percent basically any time, for any issue. And they all tell us the same thing, give or take a few standard deviations - the percentage of Americans who need more money than they have. (Of course now that inflation is on the forefront of peoples' minds, they interpret any improvement in the income of anybody else as having a direct negative impact on their own - crab bucket attitudes are skyrocketing right now so even if the government could address the issue with fiscal policy [it can't, because Manchin et al], there's a decent chance they would lose votes over it.) Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 21:20
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Concerned Citizen posted:https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1473003746510745602
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Dec 20, 2021 21:35
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Willa Rogers posted:As you said yourself: Crippling medical & pharma costs are nothing new, and it's been the case for a long time. I was referring specifically to the first graph you posted. I wasn't trying to frame anything and was just referencing the KFF chart. More people list gas than all of those other factors and rent/mortgage is only 3% higher. I'm guessing that gas is the most visible to people, but it is surprising that more people rate it as a hardship than insurance, drugs, food, utilities, etc. Edit: This one:
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Dec 20, 2021 21:37
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VitalSigns posted:BBB is a tepid liberal bill Your entire argument rests on your idiotic and nonsensical classification of BBB as a "tepid liberal bill", which is dumb because no one asked you what you personally thought of BBB. Joe Manchin has an over 60% approval rating in WV, eclipsing Biden's own approval rating. He's doing a pretty good job of representing his constituents. Concerned Citizen posted:https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1473003746510745602 The BBB has been a bloated bill with zero focus from the very beginning. Just one of its provisions would have been a huge standalone bill by itself, like the climate portion of it. Progressives got greedy and wanted to throw everything and the kitchen sink on it which is why it backfired horribly. Vorik fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 21:38
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Maybe they could strike a balance, in which the child tax credit is kept fully refundable (and advanceable, if that doesn't end up turning into a shitshow come 2021 tax time), but Biden's +$1k is shaved back to Trump's $2k, or adjusted every year for CoL.Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I was referring specifically to the first graph you posted. I wasn't trying to frame anything and was just referencing the KFF chart. Ah, the chart in which people cite problems meeting heating, insurance, housing & food costs about as much as they do gasoline costs. I'm not seeing the huge chasm there, and the pain is likely cumulative, especially for lower-income households. Willa Rogers fucked around with this message at 21:50 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 21:39
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Starbucks says they will begin negotiations with the one store in Buffalo that voted to unionize this month. They could have theoretically delayed starting negotiations for up to a year, so it is a good sign, but not definitive that they will get a contract agreed to yet. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1473031739106807812 quote:Starbucks on Monday said that it intended to bargain “in good faith” with a Buffalo store where employees voted to unionize this month following a sometimes contentious election campaign.
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Dec 20, 2021 21:50
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Gas has unique characteristics that demand a lot of mindshare. Unlike rent/mortgage and utilities, you pay for it directly out of pocket rather than by filling out a form or setting it to autopay and not witnessing it. Unlike medicine and food, it has no wiggle room where you can bargain hunt or stretch it out with additives or choose to do without just this once. It's a mandatory regular in-person expenditure subject only to the vagaries of the market and you can only submit to it. You can live hungry or you can live sick, those might not be ideal but you can pull through, probably. You can't live gas-less in most of america.
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Dec 20, 2021 21:57
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Vorik posted:The BBB has been a bloated bill with zero focus from the very beginning. Just one of its provisions would have been a huge standalone bill by itself, like the climate portion of it. Progressives got greedy and wanted to throw everything and the kitchen sink on it which is why it backfired horribly. I see this argument come up all the time and it doesn't take into account political reality. If they split these proposals up they'd need 60 votes for cloture. The whole point of throwing it all in 1 or 2 bills is so they can do it via reconcilliation because there will be zero republican votes for anything. Also, the non-progressives worked to take away all leverage to get it done and receive donations from companies opposed to any legislation that could impact their bottom line. Manchin might be popular in WV but Biden is not the whole party- which going to eat it in the coming election because they can't pass even watered-down proposals to help people that desperately need it. Proposals that are nowhere near adequate. Some blame lays with the progressives for not holding strong but plenty goes to Biden, Manchin and the more centrist dems. Blame for the Republicans, too.
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Dec 20, 2021 21:58
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haveblue posted:Gas has unique characteristics that demand a lot of mindshare. Unlike rent/mortgage and utilities, you pay for it directly out of pocket rather than by filling out a form or setting it to autopay and not witnessing it. Unlike medicine and food, it has no wiggle room where you can bargain hunt or stretch it out with additives or choose to do without just this once. It's a mandatory regular in-person expenditure subject only to the vagaries of the market and you can only submit to it. You can live hungry or you can live sick, those might not be ideal but you can pull through, probably. You can't live gas-less in most of america. Only thing you can do is, sometimes, try and find a job closer to home and lol, lmao. And then if you have kids it's  either way.
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Dec 20, 2021 21:59
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Sharkie posted:Only thing you can do is, sometimes, try and find a job closer to home and lol, lmao. And then if you have kids it's Also not drove an enormous truck, and just drive less in general when not absolutely necessary. It's pretty inelastic obviously but not completely so
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Dec 20, 2021 22:10
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Cranappleberry posted:If they split these proposals up they'd need 60 votes for cloture. quote:there will be zero republican votes for anything. You can't talk about 'political realities' and then immediately admit you have zero interest in trying to work within these political realities. You inherently assumed no republicans would vote for any of these standalone bills, even though a large numbers of republicans did exactly that just a few months ago.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:10
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Cranappleberry posted:I see this argument come up all the time and it doesn't take into account political reality. they absolutely could have done multiple reconciliation bills, they just chose not to. the whole idea of bundling it all together is that it prevents individual reps/senators from killing off bits and pieces of the agenda. it carries the risk of the whole thing going down but you don't want to have to get consensus from the entire caucus on every single part of the bill or it'll just die by a thousand cuts. i don't think it's about progressives getting greedy, it was just the best tactic. however, the admin was fixated on the ctc and that might have cost them the remainder of the bill unless manchin comes back to the table. there is also definitely a risk that a bill without a ctc extension or restored salt deduction would fail to make it through the house anyway.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:13
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Vorik posted:Then work with republicans to pass said proposals. Hm, gee, I wonder if the Republicans would poison pill or sabotage any of these possible Democrat wins. Hmmmmm.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:21
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Vorik posted:Republicans just helped Biden pass a huge infrastructure bill. Yes, because doing so A, helped their states and their donors; and B, helped kill the BBB bill. quote:You can't talk about 'political realities' and then immediately admit you have zero interest in trying to work within these political realities. You inherently assumed no republicans would vote for any of these standalone bills, even though a large numbers of republicans did exactly that just a few months ago. My dude, you are the one pretending as if the Republicans could ever, in a million years, be persuaded to support the BBB bill. That in and of itself demonstrates a complete unwillingness to acknowledge and work within political realities.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:26
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Look if they couldn't get rid of Bob Menendez who did actual crimes himself then they are never gonna do anything to get rid of Manchin lol
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Dec 20, 2021 22:29
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Vorik posted:Then work with republicans to pass said proposals. Would you like to share with the class the advance cryogenics technology you used to skip the last 31 years of politics
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Dec 20, 2021 22:32
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Concerned Citizen posted:i mean, mylan got hit with a doj investigation over medicaid payments related to epipens and was forced to fork over $300m. something can be illegal but that doesn't mean the ceo is personally, criminally liable Sure, but also the DOJ can let CEOs who are personally criminally liable off the hook and placate public anger with a slap on the wrist fine that amounts to less than the company made off illegal behavior, so ya know, lack of prosecutions don't mean much. Remember when the only person who got punished for Goldman-Sachs' massive criminal fraud in mortgage backed securities was some middle manager dumb enough to email mycrimes.psf to his girlfriend while all the executives behind it paid themselves their biggest bonuses ever from the proceeds of their crimes (most of which came from public coffers by way of bailouts of their counterparties)? Do you think those executives didn't do anything criminal and it was all that one flunkie without the connections to cover his rear end because lol. If "ok yeah here's their emails of them planning all this illegal stuff but trust us no one personally committed any crimes it was just a whoopsie-doopsie no need to investigate" is good enough for you that's your business but my standards are a little higher, so without more information from a real investigation we aren't going to see eye to eye on this. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Dec 20, 2021 |
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Dec 20, 2021 22:38
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https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1473044891936698379 maybe it hasn't died?
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Dec 20, 2021 22:40
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So now we're back where we were 48 hours ago, just everyone's blood pressure is now that much higher. Business as usual.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:42
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CommieGIR posted:Hm, gee, I wonder if the Republicans would poison pill or sabotage any of these possible Democrat wins. Hmmmmm. Just outright assuming republicans would ruin any bill kind of already says where you stand on that issue though.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:44
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Majorian posted:My dude, you are the one pretending as if the Republicans could ever, in a million years, be persuaded to support the BBB bill. That in and of itself demonstrates a complete unwillingness to acknowledge and work within political realities. I mean, if we're just talking about hypothetical things Democrats could do different, they could've tried to extort some concessions before giving Republicans the defense budget increase (and unfathomably huge piles of money beneath it) and the vaccine opt-out for people in the armed services that monsters like Inhoffe were crowing about and gotten some components of it that way. That didn't happen because of political realities within the Democratic caucus, not the Republican one.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:45
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Concerned Citizen posted:https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1473044891936698379 I love the D.C. nothing-speak, though I can't blame the WH for not wanting to get burned by loose lips again: quote:The conversation ended with a sense that negotiations would, in fact, resume around the Build Back Better act in some form in the new year." Is that more, or less, certain than a pinky promise?
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Dec 20, 2021 22:47
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Vorik posted:It's either working within the political realities of not having a filibuster proof majority, or, well, you could continue putting your hopes on bloated bills like the BBB and then collapsing into despair as soon as 1 senator disagrees, I guess. lol The problem is that they aren’t real realities. There are plenty of things Biden could do via executive order that he doesn’t. They could fire the parliamentarian but they don’t. These are fake guardrails.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:47
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Vorik posted:Your entire argument rests on your idiotic and nonsensical classification of BBB as a "tepid liberal bill", which is dumb because no one asked you what you personally thought of BBB. Joe Manchin has an over 60% approval rating in WV, eclipsing Biden's own approval rating. He's doing a pretty good job of representing his constituents. You're moving the goalposts all over the place. You did not say "Joe Manchin has positive approval ratings in West Virginia" (maybe that's true idk), you said that BBB is unpopular in West Virginia and Manchin is merely representing his constituents' desires by opposing it and that is demonstrably false. His approval ratings are irrelevant to whether the bill is popular, people approve of parties or individuals who oppose some legislation they also want all the time. See: red states passing expanded medicaid by referendum while reelecting Republican governments that oppose expansion, Missouri voters overturning Right To Work by referendum while reelecting the Republican government that passed it, Republicans sweeping Florida on the same ballot that a $15 minimum wage amendment passes with 60% etc BBB is massively popular and that's just a fact, both as a whole and most of its individual provisions. It's in the same category as other popular issues (legal weed, healthcare public option, Medicare For All, federal jobs guarantee) that politicians of both parties do not support.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:50
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Vorik posted:Just outright assuming republicans would ruin any bill kind of already says where you stand on that issue though. Uh, you are aware of what the GOP's larger goal is, right? And how they've pushed their response to the Biden agenda? Like, Biden is a moron, but they are not passing bills in the Senate and Congress in a vacuum unopposed
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Dec 20, 2021 22:51
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Concerned Citizen posted:https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1473044891936698379 It's not over till it's over.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:52
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