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June 2007
Forgive me for being shocked, but the best criticism I've seen yet of Michael Moore's left-wing propaganda film "Sicko" is an article yesterday on the MTV website by Kurt Loder.
Yes, I really said that. MTV.
Unfortunately, Moore is also a con man of a very brazen sort, and never more so than in this film. His cherry-picked facts, manipulative interviews (with lingering close-ups of distraught people breaking down in tears) and blithe assertions (how does he know 18 million people will die this year because they have no health insurance?) are so stacked that you can feel his whole argument sliding sideways as the picture unspools.
Kurt Loder, take a bow.
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As many may already be aware, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions has passed the The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2007, on June 27, 2007, which includes a 12-year period of data exclusivity for innovators of biologics. As noted previously, the House Bill lacks this key provision.
Although they have the most to gain from ending exclusivity for innovative biologics, the Generic Pharmaceutical Association (GPhA) and leading international generics giant Teva continue opposition to the 12 year data exclusivity term, which is much closer to the overall data exclusivity period for pharmaceuticals and biopharmaceuticals in Europe.
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Hillary and Barack have committed themselves to "fixing" the American health care system by inaugurating price controls, raising taxes and imposing heavy-handed regulation on the health-care industry. To illustrate the incredible stupidity and real-world consequences of adopting their delusional ideas, earlier this week I posted short descriptions of what the imposition of price controls has wrought in Argentina, Venezuela and Iran.
Today, I call your attention to the chaos inflationary monetary policy and price controls are wreaking in Zimbabwe.
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I'm really pleased to see Cal Thomas' column today explaining some of the things wrong with the new campaign to force video companies to offer ala carte pricing.
There is NO--repeat, NO--economic justification for having the government force cable companies to offer ala carte pricing. Everyone who looks at the economics of ala carte understands that many, many channels go away in a world of ala carte pricing.
No, it's not economics that is driving this--it's concern about offensive content that is driving this, and a misguided thought that, if I object to a particular kind of content, like MTV, not only should I be able to block the channel but I should somehow be able to make sure that none of my money ends up with MTV or with their parent company.
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The Turkish Press reports that Iran is being struck by violent protests against price controls and their consequences:
Like most Middle Eastern states, Iran places stringent controls on the price of gasoline. Gasoline, which costs about $1.15 to produce in Iran, is sold at only 38 cents. Naturally, shortages have emerged as a result. Now, the Iranian government has introduced rationing to reduce consumption. Iranians have reacted angrily, torching two gas stations in Tehran and protesting across the country. In addition, Iran is expected to experience 17%+ inflation this year, fueling further angst among the Iranian people. It's only a matter of time before an economic collapse causes regime change.
Iran is following the classic pattern, and the cycle is well advanced. First come the price controls, then the shortages, then the rationing, then the social and economic upheaval. There is a great irony here: The Islamic religious fundamentalists thought western sex, drugs and rock & roll would bring their countries down but it turns out the most destructive of all western ideas is government intervention into the marketplace. This is the ultimate obscenity and the clerical clowns are pimping their populations right down the road to perdition. Read More...
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It has always been a bit strange to me that in the United States the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) administer unequal standards for protection of commercially valuable, and sensitive, clinical dossiers associated with applications for marketing approval for agro-chemical products vs. pharmaceutical products. Now it looks like at least the Senate may recognize the need to equalize data exclusivity periods for biologics.
In the case of agro-chemicals, the EPA currently provides a full ten years of protection (and the U.S. Trade Representative has negotiated similar terms with most trading partners in free trade talks). During this period, no one but the right holder is entitled to rely on the data submitted in support of the initial application for marketing approval. Read More...
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Someone in the U.S. government has finally applied the brakes to the network neutrality proponents' juggernaut. The primary reason for caution is simply that we do not know what the net effects of potential conduct by broadband providers will be on all consumers, including, among other things, the prices that consumers may pay for Internet access, the quality of Internet access and other services that will be offered, and the choices of content and applications that may be available to consumers in the marketplace. So says the newly released FTC report on network neutrality. They're right. No one really knows what the ultimate effects on consumers or providers would be and therein lies the key. Read More...
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"French President Nicolas Sarkozy caused a stir (several stirs, actually) when he insisted that the new European treaty -- what some call 'constitution-lite' -- delete classic references to the primacy of unfettered competition as a governing principle of economic policy. Sarkozy also got language included that many read as a boost to trade protection for Europe, which is something he campaigned on in the recent French election.
Now, "competition policy" in Europe is broadly what we call antitrust in the States. It refers to regulatory oversight of the fairness of business practices in competing, undue market shares, and business combinations deemed unduly large or fundamentally monopolistic in nature. So, if the European Union really is backing off of "open competition" as a regulatory goal, why doesn't it drop the Microsoft case?
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Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both say if they become president they will "fix" America's health-care system with price controls, higher taxes and heavy-handed regulation. It will be a disaster if they try. Rather than curing the health-care system with more of their ham-handed rules and regulations—which suffers primarily from ill-conceived government laws and regulations to begin with—they will infect the entire economy with an "econosocomial" infection that could be deadly.
Don't take my word for it; look at the empirical record.
There are two natural experiments in price controls underway currently in Argentina and Venezuela. The results were predictable but the politicians paid no attention. Read More...
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Conservatives have been fighting to reverse an activist Supreme Court since the 1968 Nixon campaign. Now, almost 40 years later, we are on the verge of success. But have we lost interest?
The current court is very finely balanced between conservatives and liberals. There are 4 solid conservatives on the court, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Sam Alito. There are also 4 solid liberals, John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter, and Stephen Breyer. Then there is Anthony Kennedy, who keeps wandering back and forth, with the outcome of every ideological case dependent on his whims.
By April 20, 2009, ultraliberal John Paul Stevens will be 89 years old. He is unlikely to survive the next President’s term on the court. If he is replaced by a true conservative like the other 4, the balance of the Court will shift decisively to the conservatives.
In addition, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is reportedly in ill health. Read More...
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As has probably been widely noted by now, Larry Lessig says he is getting out of the CopyLeft business and redirecting his work.
I'm not going to comment so much on the work Lessig is leaving. I'm not going to dance a celebration dance (at least not publically), for various reasons, one of which is that I don't really believe he can leave it.
The other reason is that I can't dance.
What I want to comment on is the astonishing hubris of Lessig to assume that, because he hasn't been as successful as he thinks he should have been with his CopyLeft fight, the system must be corrupt.
Yes, that's what he says. It can't be that he is simply wrong, or misguided. It can't be that he has been peddling a juvenile message to juveniles. It can't be that he has been tilting at windmills. Read More...
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The headline reads "Google fights global Internet censorship," but when you read the article, you realize that Google thinks it's perfectly fine to cooperate with Communist China to censor its content so that there are no discussions of "freedom," or "democracy."
What gets Google REALLY upset, however, is when a country blocks access to Google's advertisements.
Google sees the dramatic increase in government Net censorship, particularly in Asia and the Middle East, as a potential threat to its advertising-driven business model, and wants government officials to consider the issue in economic, rather than just political, terms.
So much for "Don't Be Evil."
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Now, this is cool:
I make no representations as to the validity of the map's methodology, but it's cool, nonetheless.
And as someone who really likes maps, I've discovered a cool new website/blog. Read More...
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Tom Friedman’s recent New York Times column identifying Israel’s high-tech entrepreneurs as Israel’s “oil wells” reminded me of the bilateral U.S./Israel Joint Economic Development Group (JEDG) I attended in Jerusalem in January 2001 at the height of the Soviet aliyah to Israel. At that time I was privileged to staff the legendary Herb Stein and Stan Fisher at the JEDG talks, a bilateral forum that brought Israel back from the brink of hyper-inflation in the mid-1980’s and was still in operation when I was a junior Foreign Service Officer. At the conclusion of the 1st Gulf War, Israel faced the prospect of absorbing a wave of Soviet immigration, described as like the U.S. trying to absorb a population the size of France.
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This week I have been determined to write about something other than India. First, some updates relating to recent posts on Cipla and the Satwant Reddy Report:
In late May, I wrote about the Indian company Cipla, whose philanthropic image abroad is not matched by either its conduct in India or its profit-taking on HIV/AIDS exports to Africa. A number of folks shared with me the recent report from the Indian Government citing Cipla as public enemy number one on failure to reduce prices on essential medicines. You can read my original posting here.
Last week, I wrote about the release of the Satwant Reddy Report on protection of commercially valuable clinical dossiers submitted to government regulators. This sounds boring, but is critically important to the biotech sector, which was left in the cold by the Reddy Report. Read More...
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A news story is crossing the wire today that Maine is the first state to pass a bill on net neutrality.
Proponents of net neutrality are spinning this as a legislative victory for net neutrality.
Don't believe it.
What passed is a bill instructing the Maine Public Advocate to study the issue and issue a report.
In fact, the original net neutrality legislation in Maine FAILED. This bill, which doesn't even mention the phrase "net neutrality," replaced it.
Here is Common Cause admitting that their favored bill failed in Maine.
Don't believe the hype. Apparently the Maine legislature, like the legislatures of Michigan, Maryland, and the U.S. Congress, is too smart to be hoodwinked by the misleading rhetoric, hype, and dishonesty behind the "Save the Internet" mob. Read More...
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A load of rubbish is coming out of the WIPO Development Agenda process this week, and I'm sorry to say that precious little is being done to stop it.
The diplomatic process is mind-numbing. You go into a negotiation dead-set against agreeing to something, and by the end of the week you've agreed to watered-down versions of everything you were originally against.
"Okay, well with that slight change of wording, we can now agree to a provision that is horrible. It was really horrible in the original proposal, but with the inclusion of this adjective and the replacement of that prepositional phrase with this one, we can now wholeheartedly agree to this abomination without alienating anyone."
There's this weird dialectic going on with proposals that we should never have even let see the light of day. Read More...
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In Washington, DC there is a fine line between policy and politics, between policy implementation and political strategy. Indeed, it is commonly understood that politicians use research the way drunks use a lamp post; for support rather than illumination.
During the past 30 years, conservatives have done a remarkable job of creating alternative centers of scholarly inquiry on matters of public policy and political and economic theory -- we call them “think tanks.” One important distinction between independent think tanks and most research centers located within academic institutions is that think tanks, by and large, are transparent about their normative position on matters of public policy. Hence, much of think tanks’ output has a political strategy component attached. Nothing wrong with that -- as long as there is truth in advertising. Read More...
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A new book has just come out, Creating New Wealth from IP Assets, which is a compilation of work by members of the National Knowledge and Intellectual Property Management Taskforce.
Over the years several books have been published addressing the issue of valuing intellectual property but this one is different in that the mission of the Taskwork is not to develop a proprietary standard that could only be sold tho clients but rather they are seeking a system of valuation of intellectual property and the creation of a true IP marketplace or exchange.
Few ideas could be as fundamental for our future economic success as unleashing the value of intellectual property. Today we live in a world where that value is most often locked up and is difficult to tap in the best of Read More...
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I'm in Geneva, again, for a week of meetings at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) related to establishing a development agenda for WIPO.
If you want background information on this process, just type "development agenda" into the search bar at the top of this blog. No reason for me to recap it all in a redundant entry.
I'll be blogging anything faintly interesting that happens. That is, if my luggage arrives and I can actually show up at WIPO in something other than the clothes I'm wearing now. British Airways has managed to lose my luggage, but they charitably gave me a convenience bag with enough deoderant in it for one armpit and enough shaving cream for about a 4" x 4" section of my right cheek.
In the meantime, here is a picture of Lake Geneva (Lac Leman) on a hazy day.
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In today's New York Times ("Reviving the Hamilton Agenda"), "big-government conservative" David Brooks ramps up the Bigo-cons' obsessive campaign to do for domestic policy what their neo-con brethren did for foreign policy -- pump up the American Leviathan with steroids until no one can resist its imperial authority, all in the name of the general welfare and public safety of course.
Bigo-cons, like their neo-con brethren, prey on people's fears and insecurities to frighten them into giving up their wealth, liberty and children to feed the government beast. Read More...
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Democrats are calling for an investigation of the oil companies regarding the high price of gasoline. But what we really need is an investigation of how Democrat policies are responsible for the outrageously high price of gas today.
For decades now, Democrats have kowtowed to extremists in their party who have consistently sought to shut down every source of energy for the modern industrial economy. These are people who believe our modern industrial economy is somehow immoral and we need to go back to a pre-industrial, agrarian standard of living. These views reflect a strain of infantilism in American politics which has become too loud and too powerful through the Democrat party.
Because these extremists do a good job of posing as simple homespun environmentalists who just want to clean things up at no real cost, they have been effective in achieving many of their goals. Read More...
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| In early December 2004 I witnessed an historic moment at the India Economic Summit, when India’s Minister for Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath stated that India would meet its TRIPS patent obligations, and “will not be wishy-washy, but will be internationally credible.” This now famous declaration was the pay-off for over ten years of work by both the current Congress-led Union Government and the previous BJP-led coalition to forge a delicate consensus on patent protection that would approach, if not entirely meet, minimum international standards. And the Government of India did, before the end of that month, issue the Ordinance (later passed as legislation) that decisively changed India’s law and provided protection for pharmaceutical products for the first time in a generation. Read More...
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. . . would be to stop using the word "amnesty."
It's no longer a useful word. Nobody knows what it means when used in terms of immigration. It's loaded with emotion and devoid of any real meaning.
Now, a word like "treason" is useful. There's no such thing as good treason. There aren't degrees of treason.
But there are such things as good amnesty. Tax amnesty to give people a chance to come clean is a good thing. At some point, amnesty was probably a good idea for those who dodged the Vietnam draft.
I'm to the point that when anyone criticizes an immigration proposal as being "amnesty," I immediately tune out and no longer take them seriously. Let's accurately describe and debate the important details of the various proposals without restorting to loaded language like "amnesty."
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In the Bible the "Good Samaritan" became known as “good” because he helped a man who had recently been assaulted and robbed by providing for his care with his own money – in other words provided aid immediately and in the future without any expectation of a return. The spyware legislation potentially moving through Congress currently turns this notion on its head – instead of encouraging would be “good Samaritans” it instead protects “Samaritans” from the consequences of their inequitable, and often self-serving, acts.
Examples already exist of those that would gain greater protection for their bad acts and one recently came to light, as recently posted on the spamnotes blog:
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For several years, that was the cry from U.S. politicians—federal, state and even some local—pushing for the importation of pharmaceuticals from other countries. That call was in response to those who raised concerns that importation of drugs from other countries was unsafe and opened the door to counterfeit, diluted and mishandled drugs.
Well, those politicians may get to see a body soon: Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), has been sentenced to death for taking bribes and approving unsafe drugs.
This on the back of the recent problems found with deadly pet-food ingredients coming out of China.
Saddly, there have been bodies as a result of counterfeit drugs, but most of them (we think) are in other countries.
It’s almost as if many of our politicians live in another world, thinking that what hasn’t happened in the U.S. can’t happen in the U.S. because it Read More...
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The heavy focus on funding for the Iraq War and lately the immigration debate has obscured the now fully enacted Democrat budget resolution for fiscal year 2008. That resolution can be summarized in one word: taxes.
The final resolution provides for a $217 billion tax increase over the next 5 years. In calling for this, the Democrats revealed who they think is rich. They would raise income tax rates for single people making over $31,000 a year and for married people making over $62,000 a year. They would also double the tax rates on capital gains and dividends, returning the economy to the 2001 recession before the Bush tax cuts. The unemployment rate just before the full Bush tax cuts became effective in 2003 was 40% higher than today.
But that is just the beginning. The resolution includes a tax increase trigger providing for a full tax increase of close to $400 billion if a surplus doesn’t materialize by 2012. Read More...
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Author: Tom Giovanetti || Location: Lewisville, Texas, USA