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The $443 Million Smallpox Vaccine That Nobody Needs
Hugh Pickens writes "Once feared for its grotesque pustules and 30% death rate, smallpox was eradicated worldwide as of 1978 and is known to exist only in the locked freezers of a Russian scientific institute and the US government. There is no credible evidence that any other country or a terrorist group possesses smallpox, but if there were an attack, the government could draw on $1 billion worth of smallpox vaccine it already owns to inoculate the entire US population and quickly treat people exposed to the virus. The vaccine, which costs the government $3 per dose, can reliably prevent death when given within four days of exposure. David Williams writes that over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work. So why did the government award a "sole-source" procurement to Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, calling for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile at a price of approximately $255 per dose. 'We've got a vaccine that I hope we never have to use — how much more do we need?' says epidemiologist Dr. Donald A. Henderson who led the global eradication of smallpox for the WHO. 'The bottom line is, we've got a limited amount of money.'"
Is it Budget month?
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
ron pearlman was cool guy
Person 1 wants money, and person 2 wants to give it to them. Person 2 has lots of money to spend that he's trusted with by other people, so he can't just give the money to person 1, so he comes up with a way to include it as part of a bigger deal that looks like business.
Sounds like the textbook definition of corruption I learned in macro econ in highschool. This clumsy scheme is just above obvious, too. I guess it works so well with Chertoff and Rapiscan, hell, why even try to hide it anymore?
Wallstreet should get a clue - they don't need to create 5 layers of finiancial instruments to hide corruption anymore - this is 2011. The govt does whatever the hell it wants, and if you don't like it the media will paint you to be an unwashed mass who needs "to get a job".
Sorry, I started to vent a little there.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Obviously this is proof that time travel has been discovered by the military and there is a fear that someone will bring back small pox.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Stop posting all these anti Obama articles.....they are not supposed to be covered. You need to call the New York TImes to get your daily meme that they are pushing. You have lost the narrative when you start letting people know whats really going on. thanks...thats all for now.
Why not?
If it were a Republican president this would be considered fair posting for Slashdot.
(Gimme those troll points.) :-{=
"Siga's drug, an antiviral pill called ST-246, would be used to treat people who were diagnosed with smallpox too late for the vaccine to help. Yet the new drug cannot be tested for effectiveness in people because of ethical constraints — and no one knows whether animal testing could prove it would work in humans."
The disease has a lot of characteristics that make it a good weaponized agent. In fact, this has been one of the most studied diseases in that regard. To my knowledge, there is no known treatment/cure for smallpox- you either get vaccinated before symptoms show, or you suffer through it and possibly die. Its means of infection are well known, and I would hazard a guess that someone in the US DoD would find a smallpox *treatment/cure* that works after an infection has taken hold something worth studying for other purposes. It would also seem to me that the military is hedging its bets my making sure other nations don't get this technology as well.
While this does sound like shady dealing, there are legitimate reasons to build a stockpile of an alternate vaccine. The current one is not without its risks and side effects that significantly limit the population to whom it can be safely administered. In particular, they've had to stop immunizing first responders because of the risk. When the WHO was using ring vaccination to eradicate the disease, they accepted that a on the order of 1 in 1,000 would die from the vaccine. Obviously that's something we would like to avoid if possible.
Not a vaccine, an untested treatment for late-stage smallpox. We have a like a billion ampules of vaccines stashed away as it is. But Vaccinia lasts for 40 years on ice, this drug will last 3.
Because the Obama administration is the most corrupt presidency in modern history.
The government puts the vaccine to use regularly. The fill up airplanes with it and the resulting chemtrails are what give people autism.
WAKE UP, PEOPLE.
<crazyperson>
The US are going to launch a smallpox virus and infect people, then use that money to cure them, then everyone will thank them for being proactive!
</crazyperson>
But really, it is barely a scratch on the military budget. I know this and I'm not even American.
It's true! I read this comment but didn't post it. Three days later, I graduated from Penn State!
...when Democrats do it. Never mind a certain $3T war with lots of tasty no-bid contracts to the Vice President's company...
If it were a Republican President, nobody would mention it, and Fox News would scream that anybody daring to question it was a Communist, a Traitor and hated Jesus who called upon us to heal the Lepers!
Thanks Obama for all the meaningful change!
Given that we have the DNA sequence for smallpox, can someone please tell me why, oh why, do we keep this deadly virus around AT ALL? I was vaccinated for smallpox, but my two younger brothers lack the tell-tale scar. Given that immunity fades after between 3 and 50 years, with 3 to 5 years being typical, any release of smallpox into the wild would have devastating worldwide consequences. So, tell me again why we keep live virus in the fridge?
Before you all get upset about this, consider that there's probably more to the story. The source is Commentary Magazine, whose headlines right now are:
"National Cost of “Occupation” to Top $12 Million"
"Toomey Offers Democrats a Way Out of Supercommittee Standoff"
"Warren Backs Away From OWS"
"Police Reportedly Slashed, Attacked With Liquid at OWS"
Etc. I don't know anything about this story myself, but I know enough by this point not to just believe people when they say something bad happened at the hands of "the Obama administration."
That's the phrase that bothers me...
Please see this video. Long story short, $443 million isn't a lot of money in the grand scheme of things. Now, $70 billion in tax cuts for the rich? Well, we're starting to talk some real money. The cost of the Iraq war? Yeah, about that...
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So why did the government award a "sole-source" procurement to Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, calling for Siga to deliver 1.7 million doses of the drug for the nation's biodefense stockpile at a price of approximately $255 per dose. ... does not computer....
Would you like a side of small pox vaccine with that today?
This isn't an article about a second vaccine. It is about a drug that we don't know will work, that costs a lot, and will expire before it is ever used.
The fact that people call out the Obama administration on things they do wrong without cries of "OMG HE'S HALF NIGGER, THE WURST KIND OF NIGUR" directed at the man heading the administration, to me, indicates the human race may be getting somewhere (slowly).
--os
You're just being partisan.
Real trolling would be pointing out that the whole premise of universal healthcare is that the collective wisdom of the government can make better decisions about how to spend money on health than individuals can. Yet here we have the same government blowing a billion dollars on a vaccine for a disease that doesn't exist any more. Meanwhile, people are suffering and dying because the FDA is holding up lifesaving experimental medicine.
Your mentioning of the death rate for the ring vaccination reminded me of variolation, the earliest known deliberate vaccination method for smallpox.
Variolation had a death rate of 1-2%. But 'wild caught' smallpox had a death rate of around 30%, so even royalty variolated their kids as the safest alternative.
We're absolutely spoiled in modern society when it comes to disease. It used to be the #1 killer. Disease used to kill more soldiers in campaigns than the fighting did.
I don't read AC A human right
While it's good to have an insurance policy, it's insurance to an unlikely but deadly event. Do we really need to spend that much money to cover 100% of the population? I would imagine 25-35% would be enough as quarantine can help limit the scope. While large areas can be affected, it would be difficult to do a fully coordinated attack on the entire US.In the meantime, the US still be doing as much to prevent the spread and actual attack while ramping up production of the vaccine.
In terms of cost effectiveness, I'd rather have them have a small stock pile of insurance and instead invest in manufacturing plants that can be quickly adjusted to manufacture a number of vaccines. These plants can easily be leased off for regular medicine making for cheap on the stipulation that in the state of emergency, full control is taken away. There are LOTS of deadly diseases out there. Having to have insurance against all of them is simply gonna be an ever increasing cost.
If it were a Republican President, nobody would mention it, and Fox News would scream that anybody daring to question it was a Communist, a Traitor and hated Jesus who called upon us to heal the Lepers!
Actually, the closest anyone has come to saying stuff like that would be Joe Biden calling the Tea Party terrorists, or good old Jimmy Hoffa declaring war on them, but thanks for playing.
For Air Conditioning for one week in Afghanistan.
The whole description is being partisan, and ignorant, and incomplete.
A) The government hasn't approved this.
B) The VA system is government run and it's one of the best healthcare systems in the world.
C) Pretty much every universal healthcare is better the what we have now.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Slashdot seems fairly right wing anymore...
Why not just bring back the smallpox vaccine as a standard vaccination for children, and recommend booster shots for adults every decade or so? The military and their families got them regularly back when I was a boy, and I still have the scars to prove it. Not that I'd be keen to rely on a decades-old vaccination if push came to shove. We could just have a "You guys are getting a free (And Mandatory) flu and smallpox shot this year" day and then we wouldn't have to worry about that so much.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Here are my comments that I attached to this post while it was in slashdot/recent. I guess the editors didn't take much heed.
RTFA
Ok, I know that the LA times is not what I would call the paragon of great journalism but still you should closely RTFA. (Compare the writing in this, where the writer just seems to go on and on reciting facts without concise summarization and a coherent narrative to that of a well written NYTimes piece).
First the fact that these guys "are long time political donors" and "65% of their donations went to the Democratic party in 2008 and 2010" do not automatically make them "longtime Democratic donors". I'm not saying they aren't but don't jump to conclusions (Isn't it possible that these guys, seeing the way the political winds were shifting sent more of their money to the Democrats those years? Also if they gave only 65% to anyone that implies they weren't hardcore supporters, they didn't give 100% did they?).
Second; according to TFA most of the company's actions took place under the Bush administration. The company was formed after Bush made anti-bio weapons preparedness a priority and the Bush administration were the ones who gave the company its grants (did they receive even a dime under the Obama administration?).
Third; again according to TFA, the reason for the "sole source" agreement is because of a regulation otherwise requiring them to be a small business (they aren't, they have more than 500 people). So, according to TFA, that was the reason they had to do this and not because the Bush?/Obama? administration unduly applied pressure.
I could go on and say how, in TFA, some epidemiologists think it's a waste of money and how other, equally credentialed ones say it isn't. Still, please note that it DOES have a use beyond the original vaccine. If you get sick and don't get the original vaccine within four days, this will save you. Otherwise you die. Is that a waste of money? Reasonable people may disagree. (Smallpox the physical virus MAY* be present in only two locations but I believe its DNA sequence was published on the Internet).
Look, maybe the poorly written LA times article caused these mistakes in the summary. But that's what you get when you choose poor journalism. You should be prepared to put in the time and effort to get what is (hopefully) the true story behind the ill-presented facts.
*you could probably retrieve some from someone buried in the arctic prior to say 1950. That's how they retrieved the black plague recently.
The whole description is being partisan, and ignorant, and incomplete.
A) The government hasn't approved this. B) The VA system is government run and it's one of the best healthcare systems in the world. C) Pretty much every universal healthcare is better the what we have now.
Most of the arguments against an American universal healthcare system are based on the idea that *this* government wouldn't do a good job even if various European nations handle it well. If you consider other federal projects and programs to be a track record, it's difficult to argue against this. If you think this one thing is somehow unique and special, that people who display extreme corruption/cronyism and gross incompetence will somehow perform wonderfully when you put them in charge of a health system, please understand that you are proposing something contrary to reasonable expectation and there is a burden of proof that goes with that.
I notice in the EU corporations with business practices hostile to the customers actually do get slapped down once in a while by the regulators. If that were the norm here, I would have a lot more confidence that the government is representing the correct set of interests when it takes action. The situation in the USA is not a matter of whether such a system could work in theory or has worked for others. It's a matter of trust; there is none, and trust is a particularly difficult thing to earn back once it is destroyed.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Obama is corrupt, but you would still vote for him instead of Ron Paul who wants to cut taxes, get rid of income tax, cut departments that don't serve a purpose, and cut overseas military spending?
tl;dr
Obama is corrupt, but you would still vote for him instead of Ron Paul who wants to cut taxes, get rid of income tax, cut departments that don't serve a purpose, and cut overseas military spending?
Obviously you haven't heard this
...and they'll be begging for Ambrosia.
Bob Page and VersaLife are going to RULE THE WORLD!!!!
It's not a vaccine for first responders though. By some readings, it's not even a true vaccine, not being intended to provide immunity before catching the disease.
I'm also fine with giving first responders vaccines for stuff that they're fairly unlikely to encounter. Still, I think we need to consider the likelihood that smallpox will either somehow be released (perhaps by an unknown store), or redevelop in the wild. The first is fairly unlikely at this point, and the second would most likely simply be a similar virus – but one that isn’t affected by current vaccines. Don't forget that when it comes to terrorists, hearing that we have enough vaccine stockpiled for every american can be a reason to NOT bother with using it as a weapon. So just possessing the vaccine can be a deterant. Same idea with US units all being equipped for chemical warfare - our enemies are not as likely to try it in the first place.
As such, one needs to consider the monetary effectiveness of this move. Why? We still have limited dollars. $443M might be better spent(IE saving more lives) towards finally eliminating polio, treating obesity, as AIDS research, etc I think it's a legitimate question.
I don't read AC A human right
Really? You're going to go there?
The problem is, individuals aren't able to decide how to spend money on health care so would you rather have the government deciding on your behalf or an insurance company (keeping in mind an insurance company makes more money by finding ways to screw you)?
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Most of the arguments against an American universal healthcare system are based on the idea that *this* government wouldn't do a good job even if various European nations handle it well.
We are talking about the same Europe which is currently going bankrupt because it ran out of other people's money to pay for its welfare state, right? Not another Europe that I previously wasn't aware of?
But with further cuts to 'wasteful' government, we can return to the good ol' days.
Personally, I'd consider this a valid target for 'pork' spending. Expensive with no real prospect of providing serious benefit. The government doesn't even need to just NOT spend this money, spending it somewhere more effective is a valid alternative. There's plenty of options.
What about using this money to fund a poison control center(previously subject to attempted cuts)? They not only prevent unnecessary emergency room visits, they save lives. What about orphan drugs? Rural medical programs? Giving the EPA a bit more oomph to control toxin releases? The FDA to both properly test and quickly release potentially life saving drugs? Inspect our food sources a bit more thouroughly a bit more often?
There's a limited amount of money available, there's plenty of optimization available out there, and this is iffy enough to be a target.
I don't read AC A human right
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11240&page=R1
then you can yap about smalpox need.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Uhhh the same Ron Paul that said we should "go back to 1901" when it came to disasters while pointing out his home city while forgetting to mention it took them TWENTY FIVE YEARS to get back to where they were and the biggest gains from the disaster were by the uber rich, who could afford to buy out those that had lost everything at fire sale prices?
The answer to that would be YES! Paul has some good ideas when it comes to dealing with foreign lands (like not being the world's police) but frankly his domestic policies like most of the right wing are more than a little batshit. He believes waaaay too much in the almighty invisible hand when we have seen time and time again all the invisible hand does is allow those at the top to consolidate power. See the gilded age or what we have now for examples.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Can you not smell a bad cover story when you step in it? Did you never read about Howard Hughes, the CIA, and the Glomar Explorer? Sheesh, you people should turn in your tinfoil hats, you do not deserve them.
Hard saying what the $433 million is really buying, or where the money is going, but it is pretty obviously not going to a smallpox vaccine.
Will
Actually, it's even worse than mere corruption. If Congress nationalized healthcare tomorrow, they'd create some huge new federal agency to run it (in all likelihood). Where would this agency get the "trained" people to function?
That's right...from the now-defunct health insurance companies.
The people currently denying healthcare to average Americans would STILL be doing so.
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
You should really read more about what's going on, as that's a very poor description of what's happening in Europe. Hint: Europe != EU != Eurozone, and there are lots of different economies in the EU, some are doing rather well indeed.
Really? You're going to go there?
The problem is, individuals aren't able to decide how to spend money on health care so would you rather have the government deciding on your behalf or an insurance company (keeping in mind an insurance company makes more money by finding ways to screw you)?
And with government run healthcare the excuse for screwing you changes from "making money" to "keeping the budget deficit down". Either way you're still screwed.
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
Ah, I guess you've never met Peter King. Or Herman Cain. Sarah Palin. Or even Frank Miller.
Heck maybe you've never seen Mitt Romney's outright distortion of a comment President Obama made about "We've been Lazy" ? Or perhaps you believe that calling somebody a Nazi is only done by the Left...never used by anybody on Fox News.
Yeah, keep pushing the "Conservatives are innocent of any outbursts, and are always polite and decorous" you'll get far with that. Maybe all the way to a slot on Fox News or MSNBC.
Until you're ridiculed for your own hypocrisy on the Daily Show!
Just hope there's not video.
Oh wait, there is!
Actually...Europe as a whole is doing fine.
The parts suffering are those who got screwed by external forces imposing demands on them, and instead of being like Iceland and telling the multinational banks to shove it, they're being coerced by the larger powers to kowtow to the party line and not rock the boat.
If the Greeks had Alexander, he'd raise a phalanx and crush them.
You mean the stock market crash of 1901 which only lasted 3 years and was only exacerbated by some unfortunate droughts? So your telling me you are oppose to policies which seeks to reduce America's debt and cut frivolous spending? You don't seem to grasp the concept that if continue down the same path, we are headed towards the greatest crash in History. The national debt is out of control, yet you want the government to spend more money it doesn't have, print more money and devaluate the dollar further and borrow more from the Chinese while our too big to fail American companies get bailed out with tax payer's money while offshoring more of our jobs overseas.
> the same Ron Paul that said we should "go back to
> 1901" when it came to disasters
I have no idea what that means or what context it was said in. But assuming he meant we should abolish FEMA, rescue aircraft, and good samaritan laws - so what? Is federal emergency response the single greatest issue facing America today?
No candidate will ever perfectly agree with any other thinking person. Pick your battles.
Identify the two or three problems you believe to be most fundamental, read up on a variety of theories to fix them, then see which candidate is closest to you on those core issues. Ignore everything else.
Real trolling would be pointing out that the whole premise of universal healthcare is that the collective wisdom of the government can make better decisions about how to spend money on health than individuals can.
We already have collective wisdom of the government deciding how to spend money on health care. They do it through what the FDA approves and does not approve. This will just go one step further and instead of just approving will also rate the efficacy of various treatments so that we aren't accidentally using leaches when an antibiotic is 10x more effective.
Did you listen to the video? It has nothing to do with Ron Paul. I think you missed my point.
Paul has some good ideas when it comes to dealing with foreign lands (like not being the world's police)
That sounds like Obama talking. Also with the Libya thing it looks like we already have a President (and Secretary of State) who have learned a little something about how to walk that talk.
Like the parent post, I too have problems with Paul's faith-based economics. I mean, capitalism is the best theory we may have for explaining economic phenomena, but if it was a successful theory, then the USA would have foreseen and avoided the economic disaster that started in 2007, eh?
Capitalism needs to be recognized for what it is: a kind of emotional security blanket for those who do not want to be part of the 99% but are not willing to face up to the cold hard truth that you have to screw a lot of people if you want to get to the top of the heap.
Will
It's called Crony Capitalism, idiot. And Obama is as guilty of exercising it as anyone. Ever heard of Solyndra?
you would still vote for him instead of Ron Paul who wants to cut taxes, get rid of income tax
Why do you assume that people who think that Obama is corrupt and didn't deliver as promised want to cut taxes, get rid on income tax etc?
My problem with Paul is he has made it clear that as a Libertarian his goal is true laissez faire capitalism and as we have seen time and time again that is a recipe for disaster.
For a good example of that just look at China which despite all their talk of communism is more laissez faire than anyone else. Sure their economy is rolling while more than 10% of their farmlands are poisoned and a person living in their cities sucks down more toxins in a week than an American does in 5 years. Take a look at the top 10 cancer causing cities in the world and 9 out of 10 are in China, the only other one being an abandoned Soviet era chemical factory town.
If anything I'd say we need a more socialist system, and no what we have now is only "socialism for the rich" as in TARP and too big to fail. there is NO reason why every American shouldn't have clothes on their backs, food in their belly, a roof over their heads, and medicine when they are sick, NONE. If they want more than that? Work. But of course for them to have work you'd have to get rid of this "free market" horseshit, which is just what it is as India and China don't follow our regs or play by the rules, China going so far as manipulating their currency to make sure our imports are too high while their exports are cheap.
No I'm sorry but laissez faire capitalism just doesn't work, in fact I'd argue that capitalism as a system has nearly reached the end of its course, why? simple as tech progresses we are seeing the need for fewer and fewer workers and I truly believe we are at the point when many being born today simply won't be able to trade their labor for capital (the entire basis for capitalism) because their labor simply won't be needed.
We are in an IQ musical chairs and more and more simply can't find a seat. They are already working on robot fruit pickers and field hands, machines that can crank out a home from prefabbed pieces, what do you do with all these people? Do you execute them? Create "make work" as we have done with the fast food industry? BTW did you know that Walmart shows as one of their training films how to get on food stamps? How much you wanna bet that without that "government assistance" making labor cheaper than it should be that Walmart would just replace them with automated stockers?
The technology already exists to replace most of your low end workers, and those that work with their muscles and not their brains. The average IQ is 103, these people simply can't be trained to be rocket scientists and frankly we wouldn't need that many rocket scientists anyway! What do you do? send them to a camp? Take away their rights to have families? The only answer I can see is going towards a more socialist system where someone can live without having worked a day in their life, because otherwise we have to become Luddites and smash the machines or we are gonna have to seriously thin the herd.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
That Corel hand coded Wordperfect in assembly? I ask you, where are they now? My point is not waste, it's PRIORITIES. Sure, you can waste thousands of man hours hand coding your wordprocessor in assembly; meanwhile Microsoft is letting the hardware catch up and spending those man hours busy running you out of business.
My point is, there are much, much better targets for your outrage. You're being manipulated by the 1% (or you're a paid shill for them. Sorry if you're not, but OTOH I managed to out one the other day). Assuming you're honest and not super rich, let me say this: There's a class war on right now, whether you want to acknowledge it or not. The rich aren't content to live like mere kings anymore. They're after Godhood. They want the kind of wealth that lets them bend civilization to their whims, building pyramids & opera houses while us peons eat cake.
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This makes at least as much sense as spending $1.3 Trillion on a war on terror, when terrorism kills only an average of less than 30 Americans each year. That actually makes it one of the more innocuous issues in terms of real damage caused to the country & its' people.
There's this country called the USA, you might have heard of it or even live there. Well not very long ago they had some very serious financial problems that make the current situation in Europe look like petty cash.
One thing to consider is that Europe doesn't have a universal healthcare system. Nations that are in Europe do. In regards to size, most of these nations are more like states, so the equivalent would be universal healthcare at the state level. That's a lot more doable.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Add to this that Greece going under is mainly due to there being a culture of not paying taxes & the huge cash-in-hand economy.
Isn't that what these Libertarian/Republicans in the US want? Small government, low taxes, etc?
Greece is a chilling vision of things to come for the US if this neoconservative ideology is continued to be pushed.
Since socialism is not an option, how about we try a new strategy instead of completely dismissing Dr. Paul's free market economics and continuing down the same unsustainable path. I believe, Dr. Paul is intelligent enough and honest enough that he will work towards improving the nation, without fearing to admit he was wrong. I believe if he sees a different path is what is need, he will change coarse. Rather than electing another Obama, Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, or any other one of those crooks, give Dr. Paul a chance. After all, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Cutting taxes and abolishing income tax is a bonus, I think there are few people out there who wouldn't like keeping more of their money. Unlike all the other candidates who want to get elected so they could fill their pockets and the pocket's of their sponsors with more of the tax payer's money, Ron Paul wants to fix the nation. Instead of dismissing Dr. Paul's agenda, calling him insane, and continuing down the same path, how about you give him a chance. I mean we elected Bush twice, and Ron Paul is no Bush.
Excuse me. My grandmother and grandmother both had the benefits of access to the VA healthcare system. I have been repeatedly informed in no uncertain terms that it's a disaster. $0.02 anecdote
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
sometimes requirements are written in a way so that only the favored company can meet them
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I'm not sure how thinning the herd would help with this problem. Automation would scale back as well, so a bunch of the people maintaining the machines would be made useless.
You know who else just wanted to fix the nation? He actually did too, for a while; had a better plan.
None of that is really true. The Greeks went broke because they run a tin pot third world country that pretends to be in Europe. No one seems to pay any tax at all and the government is corrupt and inefficient. The Irish went down because they followed NeoCon ideals and let unregulated financial and property markets go wild and then bailed out the banks to the tune of their entire economy. A few years ago they were being hailed as the Free Market dream of Europe. Italy is also corrupt and has been run for the last couple decades by a guy who was much more interested in having lots of sex than actually running the country.
Europe as a whole is doing ok, and the Euro zone is only screwed because they have a single currency and single interest rate across countries with vastly different economies and legal structures which doesn't work. This means that the countries with crappy economies can't get themselves out of trouble and the countries with good economies are getting dragged down.
In no way is Europe going broke because of Universal Health care. The few countries where you can place even some of the blame on social policies were basked cases to begin with.
but we're not packing a backpack. That's one of the trouble's with politics. When you try to reduce everything to a saying you get nowhere. Moreover, our economic system isn't the death of a thousand cuts. That's a false narrative pushed on you by the Republican party. Watch the video again. The point of it is that the deficit was caused by out of control tax cuts and military spending.
But I guess if I'm going to play around, it'd be like putting a 60lb weight in your back pack, saying you can't take that out because if a bear came around you could throw it, and then tossing out the pack of trail mix you were going to bring for the kids. You had 10lbs of food in the pack, but you gave that to a trail guide because he threatened to leave you stranded, and you were too scared even though the trail was clearly marked... Ok, now see how the analogy just gets too complicated?
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Except Ron Paul has a track record, is consistant, and honest. Most of the people who criticize Dr. Paul don't even know/understand his platform, I mean how can you oppose sound money, smaller government who doesn't meddle with your life, abolishment of income tax, and true freedom?
The US Military hasn't been willing to let go of biological warfare, and probably also hasn't been willing to let go of chemical warfare either. And the Ex-Soviet Cold Warriors haven't been willing to either, and neither side trusts the other, and they aren't going to let little events like the fall of the Soviet Empire calm them down. If you remember the late years of the Clinton Administration, the fearmonger types were busy ranting about Anthrax and Terrorism, so after 9/11 happened, it was US biowarfare weaponized anthrax they kept working on got used for terrorism, and Bush got to lie about Saddam making anthrax and force US soldiers to get relatively risky vaccines to keep his pharma and biowarfare friends happy. Bush and Cheney also tried to ramp up anti-Russian fear and push NATO to be aggressive toward them (and after all, fighting Russians is NATO's whole purpose, so if they didn't do it they'd be obsolete), and that helped Russia pick Putin as a tough-guy leader, who's happy to have a quasi-enemy to give him an excuse to get tougher, and both sides get to use terrorism as an excuse to pretend that they need to keep developing biowarfare capabilities in case terrorists or crazy employees steal the other side's smallpox*, while quietly telling their own political hardliners that they don't trust the other side's military hardliners.
It's especially egregious with smallpox, because you can make anti-smallpox vaccines the old-fashioned way, from cowpox, and don't have to keep smallpox itself around. There's no excuse for either side not to eradicate their stash, and by doing so, they can reduce the risk to themselves as well as the rest of the world, even if the other side cheats . But even with anthrax, there's no excuse for the US to be developing techniques to weaponize it, as opposed to just keeping it around for vaccine and antibiotic testing, and while Cipro's now out of patent, countries like Argentina which have occasional anthrax problems (from cattle ranching) generally just use penicillins.
( * And it turns out not to matter whether the FBI is right that Bruce Ivins was guilty, or the crazy conspiracy theorists who say Ivins was framed as a coverup by the spooks who really did it are right, or the FBI-is-incompetent theorists who say that Ivins was believable enough to get people off the FBI's case after they were wrong about Hatfill, because either way there can be another Bruce Ivins or Ivan Brewski around to flip out or frame. Only way to prevent it is to destroy it all.)
Bill Stewart
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China is not a "laissez faire capitalist" system. Stop saying that. More than 50% of China's economy is directly owned by the government. They are achieving socialism by the capitalist road. Go read up on your Mao.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
How hard would it be to create a modified smallpox virus such that this new vaccine is effective while older vaccines - that China and Russia have - are not?
First, our health care system is broken, and secondly the health care law does absolutely nothing to address root causes.
If we really wanted to decrease costs to health care we'd do two things:
1) We'd pass a law requiring compulsatory licensing for medical-related patents at no more than 10% gross wholesale prices.
2) We'd charter medical guilds which would compete with the AMA and merge control over training and professional discipline with collective malpractice liability (i.e. the guild would serve as a med mal insurance plan and a mini-AMA all in one, but would exist in a marketplace with other similar organizations).
As it is, all the Democrats are really interested in doing (as were the Republicans when they proposed the same thing) are pushing Americans to pay big bucks to pay for products supplied by government-chartered monopolies.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The UK government, however, spends about as much per capita regarding health care as the US government does. So spending is not the issue here. We pay another large chunk out or our pockets.
The issue is a balance of power between consumers in some form and government-chartered monopolies. The UK has a political advantage because they didn't charter the monopolies and therefore can more easily stand up to big pharma and say "if you sell here, you must supply at a specific cost."
I don't like this solution. I think a better one is to say "if we are going to grant you a patent you MUST license it to all who want a license for no more than 10% of the wholesale cost of the finished product."
Problem solved. Costs come down because instead of a monopoly now you have a competitive marketplace.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I would agree about Paul. It's also important to note that what Adam Smith was shooting for in laissez faire capitalism was an end to the perpetual incestuous relationship between big business and big government. These seem to symbiotic relationship to eachother and a parasitic relationship to the rest of us. A few big businesses are easier to regulate than a larger number of smaller businesses, for example, and they also have an easier time gaining the ear of those in power.
The problem though is that truly free markets don't happen with a government just being there to enforce contractual rights--- that is a recipe for disaster. They are cultivated, or they exist because of a *lack* of enforcement of contractual and other legal rights. So the government can either entirely stay out or the government can wade in substantially. There is no middle road as the Libertarians pretend there to be.
Paul's solutions would take us in the wrong direction, privileging corporations ahead of natural persons. We should go the other way, abolishing the personal income tax, and drastically increasing the corporate income tax (at least doubling the marginal rate). We should also pass laws, in line with the spirit of the US Constitution which would state that businesses which only do business within the confines of one state are exempt from all federal business regulations. I would also prefer see a law which would state that self-employed persons would be exempt as well, provided that such an exemption didn't violate a strong public interest that the second party's state had in the matter.
Our economy can never be healthy when both parties are primarily interested in growing big businesses.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The Greeks are failing because they are not the monopoly issuer of their own currency. Germany has been beggaring their neighbors with the mercantilist policies promoted by the Bundesbank ever since others fell in the trap of the Euro. The German policy of a huge trade surplus coupled with the choke hold of a common currency is at the core of the economic rot of Europe. This is what happens when people follow dated neoliberalist economics and don't understand modern monetary theory. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1905625
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
The true disaster of Ron Paul is his incredibly ignorant and blindly ideological ideas of gold-backed currency. That would be neutering the government's most powerful tool of economic policy--controlling the money supply.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
You do remember when the U.S congress went kindergarden, and decicded it didn't wan't borrow to cover the deficit that the very same people passed as a budget.
The U.S is currently letting the money printing press make up for the deficit, like the southern European countries used to do. Now that they are in the euro - they suddenly find out, that they have to go through the Germans to do that - and the answer so far has been: 'Nein!'
Run with the lemmings, and you'll get your feet wet.
The parts suffering are those who got screwed by external forces imposing demands on them, and instead of being like Iceland and telling the multinational banks to shove it
This is a pleasant fiction being floated around the Internet. In reality, Iceland is seeking to solve its economic woes by joining the EU, ditching its sovereign currency, and adopting the euro -- hardly telling the banks and foreign interests to "shove it."
Breakfast served all day!
You've got this totally wrong - Greece has a HUGE government, AND low taxes. I'm pretty sure no US party is advocating that.
For example, Greeks get state pensions at 55 at 90% of earnings, and at 50 if you are in one of 580 hazardous professions (for example if you cut people's hair). In some situations, children can inherit their parents state pension when their parents die !
Plus no one pays any Taxes and the Greeks have spent the last 10 years running up debts to keep everything running, so now interest rates have gone up they are fucked.
Alex
Is this really /. material that needs to be on the front page?
Is the government purchase of millions of dollars of biotech for a weapons defence stockpile news for nerds?
I can't think who else it'd be news for...
Actually, the Democrats are advocating a big government, and the Republicans and advocating low taxes, and they are both getting pretty much what they want.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The main purpose of libertarian government would be to protect a persons life and property from being harmed by others. A country that protects private property rights would have a much cleaner environment because people don't want their property polluted. You claim China is polluted because of capitalism but the truth is it is polluted because nobody owns the property and there is no mechanism for protecting it. If you live next door to Apple in China and want to sue them claiming they are polluting your land good luck with that. Most people see the EPA as protecting the environment because they set emission standards. You are looking at it completely backwards. Why should you be allowed to emit any pollution onto my property or air at all? The EPA protections industry from lawsuits.
Now as for worrying about productivity you are missing the point as well. The problem wouldn't exist in a free society because there would be no minimum wage and as productivity increases costs decrease and so you can have higher standards of living while making less money. Look at the one pretty much free industry electronics. Homeless people have computers in their pockets that are more powerful than what a government could have 30 years ago. Look at food. For the first time in all of human history in the US the poor are the fattest people. This is because food is so cheap that if you have no self control you can actually kill yourself by eating too much. This is due to productivity. You worry about there not being enough jobs. There will always be a natural balance between labor and capital in a free market where life and property are protected.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Wow you are so wrong i don't even know where to begin with your wrongness. People don't want their land polluted? See Monsanto as to what you would have, where Monsanto pollutes your land with GMO spores and then sues your ass! In true capitalism he who has the gold makes the rules and if you have no gold you ARE the peasant in China.
And getting rid of the minimum wage? are you stoned or just insane? Did you not read where ALREADY walmart is giving training videos on how to get on food stamps because their pay is so shitty? you think having to pay LESS would make things better? Oh and the reason the poor are fat is because SHIT FOOD is cheap, whereas healthy food? EXPENSIVE. potatoes and fatty meats and HFCS is cheap as dirt but a decent cut of meat and decent non GMO veggies cost you an arm and a leg, not to mention the poor are working more hours than EVAR without being able to get ahead so they end up eating Mickey Ds because they are too fucking tired to cook!
But don't worry I predict the right wing will force through many of the things you desire, then we'll have our own Arab Spring! Capitalism is a failed system, with more than 60% of the wealth concentrated in so few hands you could put them all in a HS gym and have seats left over. As we have seen with OWS the embers are starting to catch, as they break out the dogs and the hoses it'll get a LOT nastier. Notice there is pretty much a news blackout of NYC now? They don't want you to see what is going on.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Clinical trials?! Developing such a drug would be much more dangerous than simply doing without. Who decided to spend all this money, and what the hell is their problem?
Of course there's a good reason - Ronald O. Perelman is a big-time political donor!
When we were all concerned about the war on terror a weaponized or modified form of smallpox was one of the primary concerns in terms of bioweapons. Weapons like anthrax require local delivery and it was assumed that a terrorist organization could not pull off a huge number of local deliveries. On the other hand having a dozen people do 20 releases each of a smallpox vaccine to cause a plague was considered a realistic option.
At the time we had poor quality vaccines and as a country we decided to improve the quality of our vaccination program. The offensive parts of the war on terror are so much more expensive than the defensive parts, I'm not even concerned.
So corporations are offshoring jobs and moving assets overseas because of America's already high corporate tax, and you want the government to "drastically increase" the corporate tax?
Oh ok, so sound money back by an asset such as gold which can not be pulled out of thin air is ignorant, but the government printing money backed by nothing and further devaluation dollar sounds like a reasonable idea.
Doctor Evil is not pleased.
Ron Perelman's history of political donation was left out of the summary, and that it has not been mentioned yet.
The reason Monsanto can win a lawsuit against you is because they have bought regulations allowing them to "own" the plant genes. With a government based on protecting private property there is no protection of intellectual "property" because it doesn't exist. It is just an idea.
I lived off of crappy food in college but since I didn't eat 10% of my body weight in it a day I never gained weight. Let's say I go to McDonald's which I still do from time to time. Feeding my family of 5 costs about $25. I can go to the supermarket and get a pound of chicken for $3, fresh veggies for $3, and some potatoes, rice, or noodles for $1. Now of course it takes some time to cook and clean up but it costs less than half to cook good food at home. Plus I usually have leftovers for lunch the next day.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Treatments for smallpox are being researched. CMX001 (developed by Chimerix) is a candidate for smallpox treatment (and for treating a range of other viruses as well).
See:
Chimerix.com
Chimerix has also been involved in a number of legal battles with Siga regarding the awarding of this contract.
Of course there is someone who needs it: The investor(s). And the less people it serves, the better is it – because that means more profit for every one of them. Look: This is Capitalism. So, what do you think pharma industry is good for? Making pharma products or making (more profit from) capital? but don't think twice.
I think the better solution to an eventual work shortage is to reduce the work week, and effectively double the number of jobs. If the government provides enough for basic living, and homes are built cheap enough that mortgages aren't lifelong debts anymore, it should be easy to live comfortably on less income and with more free time.
My webcomic
Why don't you look at Paul's record?
He says big crazy thins, and when he gets in he compromises to get real change done. It's what the right has been doing for a while.
Paul is an ex-physician. He's quite smart and realizes how to play the game. He's already in government.
I'd trust him marginally more than others ATM.
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I can't imagine any libertarian in favor of one in five people working for the government, which is the case in Greece (US isn't far behind, at about 1 in 7)...
Wasn't known to be dishonest or inconsistent either...
Easily. It's not sound, stop trying to make money an investment. Theocratic state governments that can meddle in your life in any conceivable way are on the menu. Not everyone is a self-centered idiot and true freedom is many real choices which people lack already today, in an environment dominated by even bigger concentration of money and even mode meddling "private" organizations (like churches) that will be narrowed even further.
But sure, keep your greed blinders on, throw yourself under the bus to get rid of income tax.
The gibbering paranoiac in me is whispering that the government either has developed, or knows of, a new strain of smallpox against which the old vaccine won't be effective. I'm just sayin'...
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Typically while first responders get vaccinated for all sorts of things that the normal person doesn't, it's because they're viewed as being more likely to be exposed. They aren't getting vaccines denied to the public, in most cases you ask your doc for the additional vaccines you'll get them.
First responders also get them so they can be the first to set up mass vaccination points if an epidemic breaks out, without losing too many to the illness(trained medical people being a critical resources in an outbreak). Non-emergency medical professionals often get the shots as well, so more of them would be available to provide care. Meanwhile, there's not enough chance of an outbreak for it to be worth the expense/risk of vaccinating the general public.
Their risk profile is different than the generic citizen, much like how a vetrinarian will typically have the rabies vaccination ahead of time, due to their greater likelihood of exposure from their work.
I don't read AC A human right
What? I thought he was Hawaiian!
Chris Mesterharm
Exactly and did you notice not a single one dared to even attempt to answer my question? Its really simple, here are the facts. Fact 1.-The current IQ is at 103, with an average loss of about 1-3 IQ point per decade. Fact 2.- Unlike in every previous technological revolution when the low skilled were able to move up to a SLIGHTLY more skilled job, such as the loom replacing weaving, or the assembly line replacing hand craftsmanship for the first time in history the are not being UPGRADED by the machines they are being REPLACED wholesale. A factory where once 3000 men worked can now be run by three guys. Fact 4.- you have nearly a half a billion people in the US if you count the illegals and of those maybe 30% have skills currently required right now, and more and more of those jobs that once required skill are being replaced. look at the new blade servers for example, where it balances itself and if anything goes wrong it calls a parts monkey to change the blade.
So what do you do with all these people who simply can't trade their labor for capital because their labor isn't required? do you starve them? Sterilize them? put them into camps? what? all those that stick their fingers in their ears and believe in the invisible hand can't argue with the fact that NEVER before in our history has things been so top heavy, where more than 70% of the wealth of the entire nation rests in so few hands that you could put them all in the average HS gym and have seats left.
So what do you do in a capitalist system with those born with no capital and no way to trade their labor? Make work? Pay them to push a paper from slot a to slot b just to have an excuse to pay them? No matter how much they sugar coat it THIS, this right here, is the ugly truth...many that are born today simply aren't needed for their labor in a technologically advanced society. Soon the cars will drive on GPS and radar, Honda bots will do the shit work and little bots will scurry up trees to pick the fruit. We don't have enough work to go around NOW, what happens then if we don't plan for it?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Here is how a free market with no Federal Reserve central planning interest rates works. At any time people and companies have to decide what to build consumer or capital goods. You can't build capital goods though without savings. There has to be enough consumer goods saved for the people building the capital good to consume. This is reflected in a natural interest rate based on savings. The more savings available for loan the lower the interest rates the less saving the higher.a low interest rate signals manufacturers that it will be in their best interest to borrow to build capital equipment. A high interest rate signals manufacturers to not expand and just use and maintain existing capital equipment and use more labor.
What happens when the Fed keeps interest rates lower than the natural rate is a false signal is created telling companies there is plenty of savings and it's time to expand capital equipment. So they ramp up building all of this capacity which causes a boom. Eventually it is realized that there isn't the savings or the demand and the bubble bursts and all those people were employed building things that the market really didn't demand have to be fired in order to move to the industries where they are needed. If rates are continually kept artificially low or the government bails out industries that aren't making what people need it prevents those jobs from moving and recovery can never happen.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Your main problem is you have a basic lack of understanding of economics. It's not your fault it isn't taught in school you have to search it out. You keep claiming that the build up of capital equipment is displacing workers and claim it will go on forever. But you don't understand how a business works. You just don't one day come up with an idea for a good and then build a fully automatd assembly line. You have to try to calculate if it will be more profitable to start slowly, start big with more labor, or start big with more capital equipment, or any where in between. As capital equipment builds up we can produce more with less labor. In a free market this causes a drop in prices. You don't see that today because the federal reserve keeps inflating the currency which eats up most productivity gains. If left alone goods would keep getting cheaper an the less skilled would have a higher standard of living while working and earning less. Like I said people in the US on welfare have cable tv and smart phones. These are things kings couldn't own for all the worlds wealth a few hundred years ago. That is what capitalism brings. Now of course there will be some rich people that have lots more than others. If it was a free market it wouldn't be bad because those people would be those that served their fellow man the best. People like Jobs, Musk, and Gates have led companies that create products loved by billions of people. When you have a regulated market like we do today it is much easier to get rich by bribes and political means to steal wealth through taxes and inflation and line your own pockets.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It never was. That's just a convenient lie to get the poor to take it. Note that I said the POOR, not the rich. The rich already mostly support it, because if they let things get too bad you end up with social upheaval that isn't good for anybody. Mind you, they want just enough to prevent that, but the point is, it's a welfare program (and a good one). Ayn Rand died penniless on Medicare & Social security you know? A friend of hers had to convince her to accept it so she wouldn't die like a dog in the streets. This is the kind of thing we're up against. People who actively campaign against their own self interests for the interests of a wealthy 1% :(. ...
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The only point to this "vaccine" is climate change propaganda by the Nazi organs of the UN at the beheast of the USA.
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Yes, the indiscriminate killing of billions in the name of the UN IPCC is at the heart of the Obama Beautiful Green Tech USA Propaganda.
Only Nazi Propanganda pure and simple by the illustrious God Savior Obama and Family.
You haven't explained this natural balance between labor and capital. Just because interest rates are high doesn't mean a business will hire more people. A company will only hire more people if it feels it can make a profit off their labor. Interest rates only effect the amount a company will borrow in an effort to make that profit. Also, any capital equipment they purchase can either increase or decrease the number of people they hire. A company that is already based on automation might expand their capacity. This requires more workers. A company that adds automation will reduce their workforce by replacing workers.
Chris Mesterharm