Why do you oppose the Second Amendment and defend the liberal Demoncrats who oppose it?

Show me one with false information on voting records and defend it.

Me three.

So you can't answer my questions or read the links. I understand. Show me where your the factual information on voting records disputes the liberal Demoncratic support is not overwhelmingly not for gun control and we can discuss it.

Why the hell would Obama try to have a summit about immigration and not invite the Gov's from the border states?

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...ration-meeting

Can't agree with it all but there are some really good points here....


http://www.thedemocrat.com/site/news...&PAG=461&rfi=9

What the above column does not mention is that the tax only applies to higher income taxpayers.

added:
From the text of the law on the Unearned Income Medicare Contribution:
Dont you think the column is misleading, or more to the point, factually incorrect, by saying that it "covers all income levels" (it does not) and not mentioning the income threshold?

No.

:lol:

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/was...00-gallon-trip

Thanks for the laugh.

That's twice this week! (still laughing at the claim the Brady bill was an ugly gun ban).

:lol2:

Laugh all you want. Among gun owners that is what the bill has been known by since it's inception. It was nothing more than a ban on the way guns looked, among other things.

Nothing more than... x ... among other things.

Does not compute.

Perhaps he is referring to barrel length, muzzle velocity, penis envy and conserative manhood.

No that right there is funny.... :3eye: :lol2:

I wonder if Obamy will let the Fed just print some more money with a key stroke to prop up the economy? Anyone?

Hey mercy

Do you understand that the Federal Reserve doesn't work for "Obamy"? He doesn't permit or prohibit any of the actions of the Federal Reserve.

It's true, they both have the best interest of the country at heart, so, often their interests and actions are aligned.

Hey mercy--

which of these three sources is the most credible with respect to facts about the Affordable Care Act? If you please, I'd also like to know why you prefer the one you choose.

number one: http://www.thedemocrat.com/site/news...&PAG=461&rfi=9

number two: http://research.lawyers.com/blogs/ar...ed-Income.html

number three: http://www.healthcare.gov/center/aut...ntribution.pdf

All of them are biased to some degree. Everyone should read as much as they can and make their own decisions based on the information they can gather. IMHO Obamy Rhamed through a program that favored the insurance companies.

America will never close Gitmo. The moral strength that prevented places like Gitmo is gone.

The sooner we close Gitmo the better. Send every swinging dick back to the country where they were captured. Carry on.....

How is the specific wording of the law, as it relates to the Unearned Income Medicare Contributions Tax, biased? Please explain.

Your subjective opinion of the overall law is one thing.

An opinion column that states that the Unearned Income Medicare Contributions Tax "covers all income levels" is a misstatement of fact.

Man, tha's a cop out and you know it. Certainly everything written by man can be variously interpreted by man. For cryin out loud, we had a fucking MATH problem carry on for fifty pages last week. I'm not asking are they biased or not. I'm asking you which one you consider the best source for facts about the law.

I'll go first, you might or might not follow. I consider the .gov site the most reliable source of the three listed as the best source for facts about the law. The others is are opinion pieces about the law, emphasis on opinion.

The reason gas prices of $4.00+ a gallon in 2011 feel so painful, is because wealth disparity has been widening exponentially over the past several decades, where the rich are getting filthy rich and the poor and middle class have seen their incomes stagnate or even be lowered. Incomes aren't keeping pace with inflation, so even though today's gas prices are on par with 1970s gas prices in equivalent dollar value, the middle class don't have as many dollars to spend.

When I started driving in 1977, gas was between $0.35 and $0.45 a gallon. When gas rose to over $1 a gallon in the 90s, no one complained because everyone could afford it. Look at the chart on this site. Note that gas prices didn't start exploding until we started 2 wars in the largest oil-producing region in the world. And so it continues now with Libya, not to mention all the political unrest in several countries throughout the region.

Now look at the graph showing wealth disparity here, and scroll through the next 15 screens. This one is the most sickening.

If it doesn't blow your mind and/or piss you off, you have no concern about the future of this nation.

Guns, abortion, homosexuality -- those are all nothing more than distractions from the real problem this country faces, and that's ensuring that we have a strong and solid middle and working class. The more the wealthy Republicans fight to strip workers of their piddly benefits by comparison to what they're raking in, the more people will be forced into reliance on Government programs. The more people relying on Government programs, the more the Republicans fight to eliminate those programs as too costly. The only place this can lead us is into Third World status, as poverty rises and the government leaves people to fend for themselves on the streets. Don't tell me it can't happen. It's happening right now!

It's an ugly, vicious attack on the very people who have literally built this nation with their blood, sweat and tears. Real Average Earnings have not increased in 50 YEARS! But the best compensated 400 Americans earned on average, $345 MILLION per year!

Republican tax cuts have SIGNIFICANTLY increased the wealth gap.

And it should be no surprise that income inequality is worst in the areas around Wall Street and oil producing states.

This path is unsustainable. Cutting and gutting government services is a make-believe "solution" that will actually only make the problem worse, leading to increased poverty, more unwanted babies whose mothers cannot afford to feed them and nowhere to go to find food or shelter. Private charities could never hope to raise the kinds of funds needed to take care of the volumes of indigent families that will need these services, mostly because there'll be far fewer people with enough disposable income to give.

We need someone in the White House with some common sense on this issue. I'm deeply disappointed that President Obama has fallen prey to the machinations of the Republicans, who have been guiding the narrative in the wrong direction. If we want to stop the bleeding, we need to participate in our government by calling and writing our Representatives and making it clear that we want them and the President to stop being dragged around by the nose and to start exposing the destructive path Republicans are taking us down.

I don't give a shit about guns. Keep all you want. Shoot all the Bambis you want. I don't care if you hate gays, just don't expect our laws to enshrine your personal hatred in it. I don't care if you want to teach and preach abstinence and "the right to life" (even if I find it grossly hypocritical), just don't elevate it to the level of distraction from what's really endangering this country in the here and now.

We have to get real, people!

(Whew! How's that for a first post following my long hiatus? :p: )

come on, don't be shy. You're among friends.

tell us how you *really* feel.

:)

I love it jill!

Wow..."insuring that we have a strong working and middle class" and "this path is unsustainable."

So what I've said and thought for so long.

It makes me sick that robots don't see this to be true.

I don't even think I love my country anymore. It's just a bad relationship, abused by the more powerful and expected to love it because I "love my country." While the powerful sip congnac and do whatever the hell they want.

It's NOT sustainable, and I really don't even want to be a part of it anymore.

Hallelujah troops and all that aside. You've been snowed.

As to this:

Many are way more concerned about being "correct." Bring on the breadlines and the starvation, just so they can stand with some sort of "I told you so" that they won't even remember ever actually telling us.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. ;)

Welcome back jill.

One thing I've never been accused of is being shy. :D

Don't jump! Don't jump! Call your Senators instead! Make them want to jump -- through hoops, to get us what we demand!! :thumb2:

Thanks for the welcome and the nice reply, infinite monkey.

Jill:

I agree with much of what you say, particularly the growing income disparity and the lost decade (2001-2010) for the middle class resulting in large part from a shift in policies that made it more advantageous for the wealthy to be able to acquire more wealth by producing nothing rather than focusing on innovation and productivity.

And I agree that the current slash and burn mentality of many of the proposed spending cuts will lead to even greater income disparity and the further stagnation of the middle class as well as limiting the US ability to retool the economy in a way that will restore US competitiveness.

But we do need to address the debt. It is unsustainable and will continue to be a drag on any economic growth and/or prosperity for the middle class. And it will require shared sacrifices, including some programs that may be hard to let go.

The problem is building consensus in an atmosphere of extremism. I dont have the answer of how to achieve that.

The best way to address the debt is to reinstate PAYGO -- and this time, mean it. No more of these freaking loopholes that allow bullshit like the Bush/Republican tax cuts, which didn't have to be paid for because they were only "temporary" and set to expire in 10 years -- the outside window for being allowed to be left out of the budget.

Oh, but wait, they didn't really mean it. Now they'll hold the country hostage unless they're extended 2 more years. Oh yeah, and still NOT PAID FOR.

And Medicare Part D? NOT PAID FOR! (And don't even get me started on how the Bush Administration intentionally lied to Congress about its true cost in order to get it passed.)

And the Afghanistan and Iraq wars? NOT PAID FOR!

Close your eyes and picture a single raindrop falling into the Atlantic Ocean. That's what "defunding" Planned Parenthood and NPR would be like. Pensions for government employees? chump change.

We cannot -- simply can NOT -- keep spending money without raising taxes to pay for the spending. Can't. It's just the most absurd notion on the face of this earth. And even more absurd to think we'll solve the debt problem by slashing what is usually primary medical care for poor women (and men, too, btw), which amounts to a measly $375 million a year, while raising the limit on tax exempt gifts from $1 MILLION to freaking $FIVE MILLION for individuals, and handing out $4 BILLION in subsidies to the single most profitable business on the planet; oil companies!

Those 400 top wage-earners I mentioned above? They netted an approximate 17% federal tax rate. And it's being reduced even further! How in the hell are we supposed to make up all that lost revenue? If we added up every dime that's spent on public broadcasting, Planned Parenthood and every single other hated service Republicans want to defund, you might be able to fill a bucket of water from the Atlantic.

We need the wealthy in this country to start coughing up their fair share. And yes, their fair share is going to be more than what's considered fair for someone making $12,000 a year. They didn't get to be multi-millionaires and billionaires without the help of the $12,000 a year schmoes somewhere along the road. If they're going to make it on the backs of the poor, it's obnoxious beyond words to then want to take away even more from people who already have nothing. :mad:

The poor and middle class in this country have nothing more to give. This turnip has been wrung dry. Ain't no mo blood in it. The government can't squeeze anything else out of us without it ending up costing them even more money. For every $1 spent on providing poor women pap smears and breast exams, the government saves $4 in higher medical costs of treating uterine, cervical and breast cancers that would otherwise have gone undetected. Yes, that's right, Planned Parenthood actually creates a net savings for the government.

And don't let the Paul Ryans of the country fool you. They're about to hold the entire economic stability of this country at gunpoint over an issue that they already passed in Ryan's budget bill! Yup. The Ryan budget raises the debt ceiling every single year for the next 10 years. Every. Year. Built in. No new voting on it every year, it's just automatic.

But they want people to believe that raising the debt ceiling isn't the answer -- cutting spending is the answer, then spew a bunch of crap that'll save 5 cents for every hundred million they're going to hand over to their crony friends and corporations. They're lying to the American public. Stop buying it and start holding them accountable for the truth.

It's the only way we're going to be able to fix this mess.

I dont dispute any of the above....until your conclusion.

PAYGO,if implemented fully and honestly, will prevent any future growth in the debt; it wont help pay down the current debt.

The Bush tax cuts for the top bracket are a significant contributing factor to both present and future debt and should be restored to pre-2001 levels.

The Bush Medicare Prescription Drug reform costs the taxpayers more than the Affordable Care Act ever will.

I'm all for getting out of Iraq immediately and finding the best way to transition out of Afghanistan asap.

Cuts to programs like Planned Parenthood, Head Start, education, workforce investment, etc. are ideological and counter-productive.

We should also eliminate corporate tax subsidies and corporate welfare to big oil, big agriculture, etc.

We should cut defense spending significantly.

We should raise the income base for FICA so that those making over $106K pay the same percentage as those under $106K.

We should reduce the rate paid to providers of Medicare Advantage.

All of the above would certainly prevent the debt from continuing to grow by $trillions/year and would even make a big dent in the current debt level.

We also need to continue to invest in education, health care, job training, transportation and infrastructure, alternative energy, r&d, etc all of which contribute to economic growth.

We cant continue to fund housing assistance programs at current levels that reward people (middle class) who made bad decisions in the past and/or programs that are ineffective.

AND we also need to make fiscally justifiable cuts to other non-defense discretionary spending and that means cutting some popular programs and eliminating others.

IMO, the choice is not between spending cuts or tax increases. It is a combination of both.

Nasty, demeaning comment by lookout123, followed by a dogpile of flint, merc, ug, classic, et al, on Jill in 3.....2....1......

We agree on nearly every count. I apologize for not being more clear in my post.

Spending cuts are absolutely necessary! Required!

But the distraction is where the current Republican Leadership is claiming those cuts need to come from. The Pentagon budget is out of control. $4 billion in subsidies to the oil industry is outrageous. It's so much bigger than $375 million on health care for the needy, that I cannot believe we're actually talking about eliminating Title X funding as if it would make any difference whatsoever.

We need to cut waste and fraud in some of the programs, not necessarily the programs themselves.

As for the housing bailouts, I do part ways with you there. The notion that people were greedy and knowingly got in over their heads is yet another lie perpetuated by the Right to demonize people for their own political benefit and distract from what actually caused the real problem. I don't know why it's so easy to believe that individual home buyers were irresponsible, but hard to believe that there could be lenders who were irresponsible in their duty to disclose, and who actually sold people a bill of goods.

I am an extremely savvy contract negotiator. I read everything (yes, it took many, many, many hours to go through closing). I ask all the right questions. My husband and I had excellent credit (750 range). Our income was totally sufficient and then some. We had no debt. None. Not a vehicle, not a credit card, nothing. We were completely qualified for a conventional loan.

But after our earnest money was already paid, and one day before closing, all of a sudden our broker "sadly" informed us that he wasn't able to get us a conventional loan after all. The "best" he could do was an interest only 1st and an adjustable 2nd mortgage. We're ONE day before closing! We have NO WAY to go looking for another lender. And then, to rub salt in the wound, the "Good Faith Estimate of Closing Costs" that he provided us was anything but "Good Faith". Imagine our shock when we walked into the escrow office with a GFE of $10,000 in costs, and were handed an actual closing cost document with $20,000 in costs! $5,000 of that was a full point the broker took that he told us he we wouldn't be paying. And he was the only sonofabitch that wouldn't budge on lowering his fees to get the costs more in line with what he told us they would be.

And take a wild guess who he put our loans with. . .

IndyMac and Countrywide.

I didn't pick those banks. I didn't walk in and ask for a loan I couldn't afford. Yet here I was, forced into a position of either sucking it up, signing the documents and coughing up the extra cash, or losing our earnest money and the house! And then the banks bundled up our loan with a bunch of other loans, many of which ended up being bad, and sold them on the secondary market!

The only thing that separated us from many, many of the people who got sucked into this mess is that we were very, very lucky that we were able to refinance into a conventional loan within the first 2 years, because our home hadn't started losing value yet.

The hucksters at the banks and mortgage companies played dirty tricks with the housing market, but they were "too big to fail" so they had to be "bailed out". People who made HUGE mistakes in how they did business -- intentionally -- got bailed out. Our economy would have completely collapsed had we let that many large institutions fail.

I contend our economy continues to be at enormous risk as more and more individuals are unable to get out of these ridiculous loans into conventional loans and the market continues to be flooded with foreclosed homes and bankruptcies rise. If the people who actually caused this mess can be relieved of their financial burden (and even walk away with HUGE bonuses), then let the people who suffered from this mess be relieved of their financial burden.

Yeah, some irresponsible individuals will benefit from it, and on a gut level that feels wrong. But most individuals were ordinary people like me and my husband who were manipulated into bad loans by thieving lenders. Let them wipe their slates clean just like we let the banks do, stabilizing the housing market and the economy, and move forward from here with some new regulations that will prevent lenders from ever getting away with this again.

Eh. I'm not worried. I can hold my own. Or choose to ignore them if I want. Don't forget, I've debated here before. And not without success. :)

Heh, I wonder if Obama deliberately timed the release of his birth certificate to after this book went to the printer.

Revenue needs to be raised - even if temporarily. Cuts need to be made and they will hurt - No one likes having the bottle taken from them.

Tax increases may or may not be necessary... Removing many of the loopholes that exist in the ridiculous system, many of which are applicable only to the wealthy, would surely make sense.
The Bush tax cuts - need to be modified - I think the $250,000 threshold could be changed to $3,000,000 or even $5,000,000 and still reap the vast majority of the intended purpose.

Corporate taxes need to be adjusted as well. Probably reducing the rates so that more companies will headquarter here again instead of overseas for lower rates. Additionally, the reductions/deductions should be adjusted so that they actually pay - something.

Cutting from defense ... Exactly who are we defending ourselves from, at this point, that warrants this amount of spending?
A good part of this is for many of our "friends" around the world, yes that includes Europe. Sorry we've been playing Daddy for far too many, for far too long. Delete this as well.

Start cutting aid from abroad. We need to take care of our own. Why are we giving money to over 150 other countries when we need it here at home?

Cutting waste and fraud from entitlement programs. Increasing the efficiency and reducing the massive BS that a citizen has to go through to utilize the services as well. I know this is contradictory sounding, but it is insane the levels of crap and the hoops one must go through to actually get the services some of us pay for.

Refund Planned Parenthood. WTF was that about? (excellent points Jill, I totally agree)

That leads me to another thought - EVERYONE MUST PAY - Period. I don't care if you make $10,000 or $10,000,000 - you need to contribute something.

Iraq - we gave you as much, actually more than we could afford. Oh and yeh - we'll be getting some serious discounts on oil, thanks.

I disagree with F&B on medicare - The Docs are getting spit at this point. (10-15 cents on the dollar.) From personal experience, I have yet to find anyone who will accept it. To this point, it has been nothing but a worthless placeholder in my wallet. Further, I suggest that every physician be required to accept a % of or a set number of patients on medicare/aid. This should have been done in the HCRA.

Somehow we need to change the situation so that more people are contributing. Having so many not doing so is unsustainable.

Very good posts/points by both F&B and Jill. I've enjoyed reading them. :bigthumb:

Oh yay, another conspiracy theory! I was hoping we'd get another one of those!

And thanks, classicman. I disagree that the threshold needs to be so high on reinstating prior tax rates, but at this point it's a moot talking point anyway.

As for those making $10,000, they pay plenty of taxes, just not necessarily federal income taxes. They still pay sales tax, gas tax, Social Security tax, State income tax, and even property tax (even if they're renting, as their rent covers the owner's property tax liability).

Perhaps - thats been a talking point all along for the D's -
Our country needs more and everyone needs to help a lil more.
Go team America.

:cheerldr::cheerldr::cheerldr::cheerldr::cheerldr::cheerldr::cheerldr::cheerldr:

You can't run up the credit cards and then cry fowl because you don't have enough money in the bank. It is a typical Demoncrat ploy, spend, spend, spend.... tax. Sounds like the days where the Airforce would build a base and put in elaborate quarters and a great O'Club and then cry off because they didn't have enough money for the runway. Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.....

Not a single one of them. I choose none of them.

Absolutely.

You do realize that the governers are appointed by the President. And if you don't think they choose people who think like minded about their ideas of the direction they want to see currency regulation go then you have been fooled.

If you are going to use the household analogy, the proper analogy is that you have a family that has maxed out its credit cards while also choosing to go from full time employment to part time hours so they can spend more time on the golf course.

That family needs to go back to working full time, and also cut up their credit cards and cancel the cable and stop eating out in restaurants.

Agreed. And to really make it they need to start growing some food and save, not spend for things they can't afford.

Hey, look who just voted against the unions!

http://articles.boston.com/2011-04-2...ns-health-care

Would you care to point to anywhere in any of my posts where I suggested we just "spend, spend, spend", then "tax"?

Is it a typical Republican ploy to intentionally misrepresent the arguments being put forth by their political opponents, then dismiss them with a broad brush insult? If so, good job!

Good post. Although your agnst for one party while ignoring what the other has done or not done over the last 15 or 20 years is a bit over the top.

We can fix a lot of these problems with a flat or fair tax. You could take 100% of the money from the top 1 or 2 percent and it would not finance us out of our problems for a month. Spending has to be cut, period. The deficit needs to be addressed for the long term but not the short term. First cut spending.

There have been some Democrats who have contributed to many of the problems we face. I would never deny that. I don't think I'll ever forgive Bill Clinton for signing Graham-Leach-Bliley and destroying Glass-Steagall. But my recollection is that Republicans had a veto-proof majority in Congress, so his signature was moot anyway (though I'm happy to be corrected if that memory is incorrect).

However, what I contend is that it has consistently been Republican policies that have historically done the most significant damage to our economy. We have suffered economically under Republican leadership to a far greater extent than under Democratic leadership in the last 50 years.

I don't think you'll find a Democrat who doesn't agree that spending needs to be cut. The Bush Administration and 6 years out of 8, of Republican majority in Congress, destroyed our economy by racking up spending on a gargantuan social program that wasn't paid for in the budget and two wars that have lasted damn near a decade now, also not paid for.

And although President Obama had to continue the Republican bailout programs, unfortunately to a greater degree, as more and more devastation to our economy was exposed, it was an absolute necessity to avoid a massive Depression. If John McCain had been elected, he would have been forced to do the exact same thing, and make no mistake, he absolutely would have.

But in spite of agreement that cuts need to be made, Republicans aren't acting in good faith or with any honesty on what needs to be cut and where those cuts will be most effective. They're cynically using the universally understood need for spending cuts to promote their social agenda, and offering up cuts to programs that are not only seriously needed in this country (and ultimately save our government money in the long run), but don't amount to a hill of beans on the side of Mount Everest when it comes to actually affecting the debt or deficit.

Cut oil subsidies. Cut farm subsidies for people who aren't even farming! (Michele Bachmann, I'm looking at you!) Root out waste and fraud. Cut the Pentagon budget (which is the single biggest slice of the pie). Stop no-bid contracts that cost billions of dollars in wasteful spending. Then dig into the tax code. Eliminate tax loopholes that allow U.S. businesses to offshore their income and pay no federal taxes on it. Roll back the Bush/Republican tax cuts that were never paid for and were intentionally set to expire in 10 years in order to get away with not having to pay for them (thereby leaving the issue of "raising taxes" in the lap of Democrats - nice political maneuver there!) and then give tax incentives to SMALL businesses to start hiring, thereby getting more people not only off the unemployment rolls, but back into the tax-paying pool, which will naturally raise revenues.

I want our government to get SERIOUS about the debt and deficit and stop playing these fucking games of demonizing the poor and targeting programs that are perceived as anti-Republican. Stop "playing politics" with where those cuts need to come from and just do it!

Sorta like you forgetting that the biggest deficit spenders over the past 30 years were Bush (#1) and Reagan (#2)

I havent seen any flat or "fair" tax proposal where the numbers work or that is not highly regressive.

In fact in the few highly industrialized countries where they were attempted, they failed miserably in meeting revenue projections.

If you have the details of proposal that dosnt rely on voodoo economics, I'd love to see it. Most of the proposals are short on details and heavy on ideological (and unsubstantiated) assumptions.

But, in the meantime, both the CBO and the Joint Econ Committee have found that extending the Bush tax cuts on the top bracket will cost $3-4 billion over the next 10 years.

I can't agree. Look what we got for our money. How many jobs were created? At what cost? Many went to pet projects for the Dem majority. Look at the millions spent and the product we got from them.

http://stimuluswatch.org/2.0/

Pelosi, Reid, and Obama rammed programs through without being to explain their costs to the people, and when they did so, they used smoke and mirrors. They controlled congress for 4 years and the spending has gone up astronomically. They bailed out Goldman, gave out the bonus money to the top execs and then Obama hired a bunch of them into the government. Fannie and Freddy were pushed by the dems and pressure came down for them to make more and more loans. But I would agree that no one party is to blame for the housing mess. They should have taken all that money and just paid off the banks for the bad loans, then re-vamped the whole thing. Obama forced large banks to take bail outs they did not want or need, why? So they could impose greater regulations on them. And then when they tried to pay back the money the administration refused it. Why? because they want control. Obama and this administration are not to be trusted any more than people didn't and shouldn't have trusted what went on when Bush was in office. There is enough duplicity to go around when you attack one party over the other. And don't get me wrong, I don't give Bush a pass...

Over 1 million private sector jobs created last year; an additonal 250,000+ in each of the first three months of this year (BLS stats). Many resutling directly and indirectly from stimulus projects.

After seven straight quarters of GDP decline in 07-08, seven straight quarters of GDP growth starting when the stimulus program kicked in.

Look at the graph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt



That is progressive talking points for "make everyone pay something" towards the Federal Income tax.

Cut spending.

At what cost? It was a fucking boondoggle. Not a complete waste, but waste never the less.

At the cost of avoiding an economy in free fall and a depression that would have been much deeper and lasted much longer.

Also, dont forget that 2/3 of the stimulus funding was for tax cuts and tax relief, mostly for small businesses and middle class, along with increased benefit for large number of unemployed in the preceeding 2-3 years ....the kind of tax cuts that Republicans generally like (maybe not the increased benefits part) but refused to support in the stimulus bill for political reasons.

Really? That's all? I though it was much more than that.

Oh yeah, another issue I'd LOVE to see Congress and this Administration take on -- the fucking Pharmaceutical industry! Now there's an industry both Republicans and Democrats have been in the pocket of, to the enormous detriment of our country's fiscal health.

Let's start by doing away with granting exclusive patents for drugs, that allow Big Pharma to jack up prices exponentially, ultimately costing all of us dearly. For an example, see this story about the FDA granting an exclusive patent to KV Pharmaceuticals to manufacture a drug that compounding pharmacies have been providing for decades for $10 per injection, who then immediately jacked up the price to $1,500 per injection!

http://www.tampabay.com/incoming/pre...o-1500/1156358

The idea behind taking "production" away from individual compounding pharmacies and centralizing its manufacture was well-intended. It was meant to ensure a consistent product and wider availability. But no one anticipated that the greedy Pharma creeps would literally gouge the public for a drug they did absolutely NO R&D ON! Now it's going to cost us $30 million more annually, much of that burden being spread to all of us in higher insurance premiums, and a significant portion being picked up by the government who will have to subsidize it for Medicaid patients.

I acknowledge that Republicans are against more government regulation, but I contend regulating the price of pharmaceuticals is not only called-for, but a moral imperative. When I lived in Mexico, I could buy my name-brand (not generic) birth control pills, over the counter, for $1 a month. In the U.S. I had to have a prescription and they cost $25 a month. You can't tell me that it's fair that Americans should have to fork over 25 times the cost because Big Pharma lies and says they have to recoup R&D costs. Why on our backs and not on those in other countries? Why after so many years on the market, when it's clear the initial R&D costs are already long paid for? Medicare Part D was nothing but a gigantic gift with a huge bow for the Pharmaceutical Industry.

We stopped allowing cigarette companies to advertise on television decades ago. It's time to prohibit drug companies from spending billions of dollars on television advertising. Those billions should be used to cover the costs of R&D and to actually pay for the manufacture of medications. Individuals can't just walk into a store and buy these medications over the counter anyway. They can only be prescribed by a doctor. So limit Drug Company advertising to Professional publications and direct marketing to the doctors who would be prescribing them. This would, by default, drive costs down.

There are BIG ways we can severely reduce the cost of healthcare in this country without decimating Medicare as we know it, which will make a big impact on government spending. But our Representatives aren't willing to even put these things on the table. Instead we spend months and years arguing over $375 million for Title X funding, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Todays news. :rolleyes:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/More-p....html?x=0&.v=2

What was the probability that would have actually happened? Not every thing that was bailed out needed to be bailed out.

Under TARP or the Stimulus #1 and #2?

The advertisements for drugs is pretty weird, and I would prefer it if they weren't on tv, but the argument in favor of them is that some consumers won't even know there is a drug that can help them unless those commercials exist.

I disagree with you on patents. The idea of a patent is that you invent something and then it's yours. You can keep other people from making that item until the patent expires. The tradeoff is that in the patent, you tell the world how you did it, so that once the patent has expired, human knowledge is advanced, and other people can build upon that invention. The term of a patent is only 20 years. If you take patent protection away from some people or companies, why in the world would they bother to invent anything? People are just going to steal their invention.

There are lots of drugs out there that are no longer covered by patents. I take generic claritin this time of year because my allergies act up. That patent expired a few years ago and that drug, which is quite helpful to me, is now available for my use for a very low price.

Don't they just tweak one little thing in a patent and that makes it legal to make? Isn't that where the whole idea of knock offs comes from?

It gets complicated, because then you have to get approval from the FDA, and that's where the real expense is.

The generics often tell the court they are being sued in for patent infringement that their drug is totally different from the patented one and that they aren't infringing. And out of the other side of their mouth, they tell the FDA that their drugs are exactly the same as the one they are copying so that they don't have to go through all the patient trials to prove it's safe.

It is a conundrum. They have a right to a profit. But do we have a right to get generics from Canada? And many of the big Pharms give drugs away in the third world compared to what Americans pay for them. Who knows. But when government starts to interfer in the free market and tell companies how much profit they can make or who can or cannot run their companies I have a problem with that.

Start with drug reimportation legislation that allows importing from Canada and EU, with regulatory safeguards to prevent import of counterfeits.

It has widespread, bi-partisan support but dies a quiet death every year:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill...19&tab=related

Unfortunately, even with bi-partisan support again this year, it will get loss in the shuffle.

and to close this out:
Strictly ARRA (stimulus) - 1/3 tax cuts and tax relief (middle class and small business), 1/3 benefit increases (UI, COBRA extensions, etc) and 1/3 grants/contracts (job creation)