Obviously, being the NY Times Editorial board, the word “Obama” fails to appear
In the United States, nearly one-third of adults, about 76 million people, are either “struggling to get by†or “just getting by,†according to the third annual survey of households by the Federal Reserve Board.
That finding, dismal though it is, represents a mild improvement in general well-being last year, compared with the two years before. The improvement, however, was clearly too little to raise Americans’ spirits: The new survey, which was conducted in late 2015 and released last week, also shows that optimism about the future has tempered.
Who’s been president these past 7+ years? Let’s be clear, when Bush was president, everything that went wrong economically was blamed on him. Yet, Obama is utterly spared from his policies that have led to the worst economic recovery post-recession since WWII. The wasted money from failed stimulus programs, obamacare, regulation after regulation, economic proposals, they have all helped to stymie economic growth.
Congress and other economic policy makers, as well as the presidential candidates, could also use the survey to get some insight into Americans’ real economic problems. Among them is deep insecurity. Nearly 70 percent of adults said they were “living comfortably†or “doing O.K.†— up a bit from previous years — but nearly half of all respondents said they could not cover an unexpected expense of $400, or could do so only by selling something or borrowing money.
Thanks, Obama and Democrat lawmakers. And these fools want more of the same our of Hillary or Bernie.
Over all, the survey depicts an economy in which many Americans face daily hardship, while even the college educated — the presumed winners in the economy — still face big obstacles. The findings argue for continued low interest rates; for government policies and federal spending to help create good jobs at good pay; for affordable education that starts at preschool, thus fostering college-ready students; and for a safety net that can withstand today’s potent economic forces.
By all means, let’s double down on the policies that have failed, while increasing the size and power of government.
But Obama is spending our tax money going around the country telling everyone how great the economy is and how he is the one that saved us. Despite the fact that the real unemployment is around 20%. The GDP is close to zero. Most people that I know who are young can’t get a job. Most older people that I see as patients are hurting like never before. The shoeshine boy does not even know what he has done, or is intentionally killing our country.
“Shoeshine boy” David even you must know tfat is racially charged
Obama’s polls are 3 times what Bush left with and the Congress(GOP) has currently
And David are you implying that BIG GIVERNMENT is responsible for creating jobs? Didn’t Bush tell us that if we cut taxes for the 1% that would be when the “job creators” would make all those new jobs appear?
Maybe if we hadn’t blown 2-3 trillion invading and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan our economy WOULD be better
And indeed a good laugh tell us again why you didn’t volunteer to fight the Commies in Nam
Hey dave (whitesheets) a-hole,
When does your klavern meet? Most white guys from the south have 1/16th or more Black in them. Have you researched your ancestors to find out which of your great-grandpas was a Black man?
We would imagine all your patients, after a visit with you, are hurting like never before.
In the future 9ne should refer to president loose shoes as p-p-p-president o-o-o-Okey d-d-d-doke.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/06/wow-obama-tries-trash-donald-trump-turns-stuttering-mess/
How big a tax cut to the wealthy will it take to fix the economy?
What regulations would you revoke to reach full employment?
double penetration,
Your self-loathing is a pathetic thing to see. Fetishes are weird but don’t beat yourself up. After all, those big Black men you fellate are willing participants (as opposed to your cocker fetish).
Well o-o-okey d-d-doke, little whoremonger.
Notice that Jeff has lost it after we exposed what a sleaze he is. Constantly going on about how the rich, the only ones paying taxes should not get a break. Yet, this has worked every time to get us out of the Democratic financial slums that we have been in over the last 100 years. But don’t worry, Jeff knows very well how to fill out the paper work and get more taxpayer money for his business and pleasure.
Surprise-J has no rebuttal so resorts to KKK and homosexual insinuations, all, as usual, without any proof. Keep up that brilliant debate technique, J
Teach does Congress deserve any blame
Through most of the Bush years the Congress was GOP
Aren’t they an equal branch? Shouldn’t they get equal blame?
Obama’s poll numbers are 309% higher than the GOP Congress
Americans blame Congress
The working classes have been barely getting by for decades. Wages have been flat; and although improved steadily since the peak, unemployment has not been full since the 90s.
The current plight of the working classes is the culmination of decades of policy designed to reward the wealthy at the working classes’ expense. Trade, tax, immigration, patent, labor, fiscal, lax financial regs and monetary policies have all punished the working classes, with the cumulative effects leaving us where we all today.
The policies were put in place and supported by mainstream Republicans and Democrats.
Trump has said little of substance on any topic, but has offered no explanation of how he will turn things around. Paul Ryan has said Trump will support the House ideas on the economy; ideas that will make things worse.
– that little whoremonger guy who exaggerates often
Perhaps the little whoremonger guy can explain the dirty little lying whore’s plans
to turn around the disastrous policies of president okey-doke-don’t-blame-me-for-the-last-7 1/2-years-blame-those-other-guys-because-everything-really-is-great-look-at- my-new-house-guys
First, one has to define “wealthy” to even understand the question. Liberals like Jeffery define “wealthy” as “those who make more than I do.” The fact of the matter is that there is a envy factor each and every time someone says “the wealthy need to pay their fair share” as 1) they are paying MORE than their fair share when compared to the 49% of the population who don’t pay income tax at all and 2) no one defines what is “fair share.”
Wow. That’s a shocker since the Feds announced in February 2016 that “full employment” had been obtained.
Oh, and the last time “full employment” was obtained was 2005 – 2008 during the Bush years.
Any and all regulations that do not show a direct positive effect on production and jobs.
For example, regulations that require that food sold in restaurants or in stores must be made in a commercial kitchen. Small artisan chefs of everything from cheese to baked goods to ice cream can’t afford the minimum $50 for a commercial kitchen so they don’t work. Obama’s new regulations on overtime requirements is a job and benefit killer. The CPSA now makes crafters and part time makers of hard goods criminals due to not being able to afford to test paint, dyes, etc for lead even though those paints,. dyes, etc, are tested for lead when they are made. A regulation in Florida was passed to require surface paint meet a coverage standard when used in government buildings. The testing is expensive, adds nothing to the quality of the paints but does add 25% to the cost of each gallon of paint. The testing results in paint that costs more than the best paint on the market, but less quality. Start up livery services such as Uber are being regulated out of business. Same thing for BnB’s. Next thing you, kids won’t be able to sell lemonade in front of their house. Ooops! They already can’t do that. New regulations on gender and ethnicity pay is going to cost billions and not produce anything of value. In my neck of the woods, you cannot sell skim milk if you take the milk, pasteurize it, and remove the cream. Historically, that is what skim milk is, but in Florida, and the federal standard is that the process does not result in skim milk. (The Department of Agriculture actually says that if you sell that product, you cannot label it as “skim milk” and have to say on the label that the product did not come from a cow.) How that helps consumers is anyone’s guess. If schools accept federal funds, they are required to have degreed mental health professionals on hand at the school. The IRS outlawed companies paying employees to seek their own individual health insurance forcing employers into group plans paying the much less expensive fine for not providing insurance. Regulations prevent or make prohibitively costly for restaurants and stores to donate food to the homeless and or homeless shelters. Speaking of food, Michelle Obama’s regulations on school lunches and now day care center foods are costing untold money in uneaten food. The EPA’s new mandate on increased ethanol in engines means the fuels produced will eat every engine on the market today. (Broken window theory anyone?) Regulations such as the ADA are so far out of hand that no one knows how to comply or deal with the mess. Philadelphia requires a business license for bloggers that make money on their blogs. One lady who made $11 was fined for not having a license. In your neck of the woods, two girl scouts were told to stop selling girl scout cookies from their own front yard. “Take a book / leave a book” programs have been banned in many states and cities. Monks in Louisiana needed a funeral license to sell caskets. They weren’t hosting funerals, but were selling the product of their woodworking skills. New regulations on calories in food served in restaurants are going to be a nightmare to comply with, will cost and average of over a billion a year, and will have no effect on anything. The same is true for salt regulations. Inheritance taxes kill small and medium sized businesses -the very businesses we should be encouraging.
I could go on and on and on.
Regulations that only create paperwork or show no real benefit should be scraped.
The semantician strikes again! Besides being a dickhead you’re also a mind reader! One can designate any number of groups as “wealthy”. The top 1%, 5% etc. Regardless, when cons cut income taxes (and taxes on unearned income), the benefits accrue to the wealthiest amongst us. Regressive payroll taxes are never cut (except temporarily by Obama). Regressive state and local taxes expand to make up for the lost revenues. A good deal for the wealthy, not so much for the working classes.
Full employment in 2016, that’s great! But doesn’t kick the stuffing out of Teach’s lame argument?
Eliminating your list of petty grievances on regs will not lead to full employment (which you claim we already have!).
Your claim about the inheritance tax is false.
And yet you didn’t bother to designate any group. Now you want to blame others for your point being imprecise and incorrect.
Why would that be? Are you really trying to say that people can cut taxes on those who don’t pay taxes to begin with? If tax cuts are made across the board, they affect those who pay taxes – not just the “wealthy.”
Nope. Why would it? (And by the way, it is not me making the claim of full employment. It is Obama administration through. So you either have to accept the point or admit that Obama lied – again.
You asked for a list of regulations that could be eliminated to improve employment. There are two direct statements that give you an answer and you ignore them. The list of regulations you call “petty” are examples of regulations that do hurt employees and employers, but you aren’t interested in answers. You thought you had a question that no one would answer and when you got an answer, you not only attacked the messenger, you ignored the answers.
Tell me Jeffery, if your company did not have to spend what is estimated to be $25,000 to $50,000 on the new EEOC reports, what could your company do with that money? Would you advocate paying people more? Hiring more people? Or dividing it up amongst investors like you and your wife, thus benefiting you?
Except for the fact that is it true. When a parent dies and leaves a child a company the parent built, the child is responsible for the taxes. Many people can’t afford the taxes so they have to sell the company.
So you have no idea what constitutes wealth? You’re lonely, aren’t you?
This is a common tactic with cons. The working classes pay plenty of taxes, regressive payroll taxes, regressive local taxes. Why don’t the cons ever suggest cutting those taxes that fall on the working classes?
Why the big concern with cutting the taxes on the wealthy even more?
Just because you supplied a Gish Gallop of regulations doesn’t demonstrate that these impact the unemployment rate. We don’t spend $25,000 to $50,000 on EEOC reports. Can you support that claim?
This is a common claim from the wealthy and their minions. It’s also untrue. 0.2% of estates face the inheritance tax. Spouses pass their estate to a spouse tax free. Otherwise, the first $5.45 million is tax free to other heirs, and the amount over that is taxed at 40%. The estate tax was established in 1916, to tax the unrealized capital gains. A surviving spouse can utilize the dead spouse’s exemption passing along a total of $10.9 million tax free!!
Can you find examples where a poor kid had to sell their small business or farm because of the estate tax?
So you say that you can’t define what “wealthy” is and then your only recourse is to insult people who want to know exactly what you are talking about.
Caught in a trap of your own making, you lash out like a child.
Yep. Logic and facts are a tactic with conservatives which is why liberals can’t stand it.
You can cut taxes to below paying nothing?
As I said, if you cut taxes across the board, you don’t have to worry about who is getting a tax cut because everyone is. But you don’t care about that. You only care about dividing people based upon some notion of “wealth” that you won’t even define.
Wow. You really have a reading comprehension problem, don’t you? Go back and read what I wrote and if you still don’t understand, at least admit that.
As for the list, you are the only person I know who would ever think that allowing more people to work and and allowing more money to go to more employees wouldn’t affect unemployment.
We get it Jeffery – you want the government to take all the money it can, except of course for your money.
That’s your plan and position.
We get it gitarcarver, you like to argue minutiae out of loneliness or as an ad hominem debate tactic.
Governments need revenue to operate (which is why the anti-America right want to “starve the beast”). What’s important, gitarcarver, is how the government obtains revenue. The right want the mass of the working classes to shoulder the burden and to let those that prosper most by living in America off the hook. Today you see the result of nearly 4 decades of conservative tax policy. Federal debt and a battered middle class. Thanks Ron, Bill, W and Barack. Thanks Congress. The Reagan revolution was against the working classes.
Personally gitarcarver, I have and will abide by the tax laws of the land and as a 1%-er I likely pay as much federal tax as 90% of Americans make in income. I expect to pay even more if the candidate I support wins the election. Trump promises to cut my taxes, but I don’t make policy decisions on how they effect me personally.
We will pass our estate on to my children tax free because of the generous exemptions afforded by the Inheritance Tax which you claim punishes heirs. Even though you lie about the nature of the Estate Tax, I’ve always been fascinated by how eliminating Estate Taxes comports with the “tough individualism” at the core of pseudo-conservatism. Why are heirs entitled to hundreds of millions of dollars tax free? They didn’t earn it. Paris Hilton didn’t earn the milllions she will receive, her great grandfather did. You demand that the working poor pay payroll taxes on the first dollar they earn, but let the superwealthy get millions without taxing it at all!
We get it. You punish hard work but reward socialites for doing nothing.
gitarcarver, comment 13 was excellent with all the examples you provided.
However, you’re trying to reason with a person who stated on this website that
“We have regulated the US economy into the greatest economic engine in history.”
To say jeff is an economic illiterate is to give him credit.
Americans always blame congress for everything. The sad thing is they NEVER VOTE OUT THEIR OWN GUY….its always YOUR GUY that is at fault….Hence something like 80 percent of all congress and senators get re-elected…..and guess what….they do the same thing for the next 2 years….run for office, collect speech money and pad their offshore accounts all the while declaring with a vengeance that if you will just elect them one more time they will FIX EVERYTHING.
Really you should do your research on this subject and you would be enlightened as to how the government OF ANY ADMINISTRATION cooks the books.
We are no where near full unemployment. During the Obama years the rolls of SSDI or soc. sec. disability has swelled by almost 2 million.
The VA has added 9 million new vets to their disability ranks and the ranks for 100 percent or those ranked unemployability with 80 percent disability which grants them the 100 percent pay has grown by 2.81 million in Obamas admin.
College enrollment is up 19 percent under Obama with NO contributing factors other then the government has taken over the student loan industry and made it extremely easy to loan your way thru college.
You add these numbers up and REMOVE THEM FROM THE RANKS OF THE UNEMPLOYED and you find a society that certainly is not full employment, is not nearly as productive as we were under Clinton or Reagan and certainly the numbers when extrapolated shows us a real unemployment of around 16 percent.
The Workforce participation numbers are the lowest in decades despite full unemployment.
YOU GUYS are just arguing to be arguing. If you would all stop trusting your side of the political isle you would realize we are all being played like a fiddle.
You could tax the rich at 80 percent and still not fix what ails this economy.
What ails it you ask? Simple.
PRODUCTIVITY and accountability. When your forcing 15 dollars per hour on McDonalds and Wendys and Walmart they have two choices……CUT THE WORK FORCE AND RAISE prices. Either way we are making things worse not better.
NEITHER SIDE HAS AN ANSWER….that is why they all demand that if you just REELECT THEM ONE MORE TIME…..they will fix everything….in the meantime they are just growing rich off YOUR STUPIDITY and depending on ALL OF YOU TO DEFEND THEM must as candidates do not respond to allegations but send out minions to do it for them.
They wash their hands and let US FIGHT IT OUT….may the best liars win…..Politics makes liars of all of us.
hankie,
I work in one of the most regulated industries extant. 99% of our corporate funding comes from venture capitalist investors overseen by the federal gov’t and the development of our products are regulated at every step by the US FDA. And do you know how much we complain about regulations? Not one bit.
Our detailed corporate budgets never have line items for regulations. We specify how much we intend to spend on IT services. Travel. Consultants. But not gov’t regulations.
Would you like to eliminate FDA oversight of drug development and marketing?
Would you like multi million dollar investments not to have gov’t protections in place?
If your most significant argument over gov’t regs is that the Girl Scouts had to move their cookie booth 20 feet from the door of a Hobby Lobby… you’ve lost. If your biggest concern is that the feds are cracking down on the Salmonella lobby… you’ve lost.
Since cons and libertarians don’t practice integrative thinking, it never occurs to you that regulations often have a stimulative effect. Accountants and tax lawyers benefit from regulations. Plumbers, electricians and carpenters benefit from local building codes.
In our business we have to persuade the FDA that our potential drugs are safe, requiring us to run multiple studies at private laboratories around the US. (By the way, FDA scientists and managers are very impressive folks, absolutely professional, absolutely knowledgeable and committed to human safety.) One study can cost us up to $500,000 and can involve 3 or 4 small businesses to complete (drug formulations, pharmacologists, pathologists, analytical chemists, toxicologists etc). This transfers cash from venture capitalists (who invest in high risk endeavors) to small businesses like ours and many others that work for us. Our direct labor/facility costs are low (25%), the rest gets spread to small businesses (mostly US) we contract with. If the FDA allowed us to directly market a drug to patients it would put patients at risk and harm the economy.
Isn’t it a good thing that the superwealthy are encouraged to invest in high-risk, high-reward endeavors, with the added potential benefit of helping mankind?
jeffy, you’re a fool living in a subsidized bubble.
You know nothing about economics and less about everything else.
Let’s be clear Obama has approval ratings 3 times as high as the GOP Congress
As I have said about old Jeff, he receives government money, our tax money for his business. He claims one study cost $500,000. That is very, very low. What happens is that he signs up doctors as I have said before, paying enormous sums, for results. Before the trial starts, there is a huge get together at a major resort, like Orlando. They provide expensive rooms, entertainment, food for several days. There is not much that is more corrupt than our drug approval process.
John,
Shoeshine boy is racially charged, Clinton used a similar reference in 2008 about Obama, so it is ok. But the fact is that we need to start condemning race mongers and people who are so PC that they can barely move. We have a major problem with the current president who is basically an affirmative action guy (all his life).
I just want to make sure that I understand your point. You asked for regulations and not only did I give you and overall standard of regulations tobe eliminated, I gave you a short list of regulations that could and should be eliminated. So which is the “minutiae?” The actual list of some of many regulations that could be eliminated or the overall criteria for eliminating regulations?
We all get it Jeffery. When the facts are against you, you go off on some tangent and attack people that prove you wrong. You can’t argue the facts, so you go after people.
You asked for regulations and you got them in two forms – both an overall view and specific regulations. Instead of actually address the point, you claimed that the regulations that prevent people from creating their own jobs, or regulations that don’t do anything but create paperwork have no effect on employment.
No one can argue with that type of stupidity.
So you lied when you said We don’t spend $25,000 to $50,000 on EEOC reports.
If you don’t know the costs, how can you claim that you don’t spend a certain amount on regulations?
And regulations provide irevenue how? The short answer is that they don’t yet you and john are for job killing, increased cost regulations.
And because the government does not make, produce or sell anything, the idea is to keep the government as small as possible because the only way the government gets revenue is off the backs of people who actually do work. You see to believe that government for the sake of being able to take money from people is a good thing.
It’s not.
Of course, you cannot supply one bit of proof of that. People like you on the left want to penalize people for working hard and making more money by increasing their tax burdens. That’s what the left has done to this country. In 1961 JFK said “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” The left’s mantra now is “ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can steal from others.”
In 2005 the CBO did a report showing exactly what I claim – that small business and farms when left to heirs created tax burdens that were difficult to pay off. In 2013, Congress realized the problem that you said never existed and raised the threshold of value that would be taxed. Even after the passage of the bill, it is estimated that in 600 deaths would create a tax burden as I said. So please, don’t lie and say there is no burden when there is.
Your fascination could be due to the idea that you are a selfish individual who has no interest in making a better life for those you sired. You believe that the instead of your children benefiting from your hard work, only the government should. Conservatives believe that the fruits of hard work should stay in the family and not go to the government.
If you are truly against your heirs receiving money or property from you, you would leave it to the government to enrich their coffers. We all know that you won’t do that. You’re response is “other people can keep their money so I should keep mine instead of acting on the principles I say I believe in.”
Geez, could anyone be as dense as you are in these statements?
Please tell me why people should be taxed twice? Once when if comes to the family and again when it is disbursed to children of that family? And of course, the “socialite” issue is not what anyone other than you is talking about. If an heir receives a business or a farm, they should not have to pay tax on that. THAT’S the issue. If they sell the business or farm, that’s a different story. But to have to sell a farm or business because the parents who built it up die is despicable. (Which is probably why you support the idea of doing it.)
dave,
As I’ve proven and re-proven you don’t know what you’re talking about. My company is funded by venture capitalists, not the government. And what I described were nonclinical safety studies required by the FDA to open an IND (usually in both rodent and non-rodent species) + genetox and pharm tox studies. Not Phase 1 clinical studies. Although, one can conduct a small Phase 1 study for under a million bucks.
Your description of what occurs in clinical studies is also flawed. Do you think the FDA is corrupt? Are you jealous that no one involves you in clinical research?
dave (whitesheets) mcdoctor,
Can you supply us with a reference detailing where a Clinton called Obama a shoeshine boy?
hankie,
Who subsidizes me? Big corporate investors and a giant drug company pay me handsomely for my expertise. Is that whom you mean?
gitarcarver,
How is taxing capital gains taxing anything twice? That’s a talking point, not an argument.
Grandpa Drumpf buys $1 million of ACME Widget stock, holds for 20 years, dies and Pa Drumpf inherits $10 million of ACME Widget. He holds it for 20 years, dies and daughter Paris Drumpf inherits what is now $100 million worth of ACME Widget. When was it taxed? On the wages that Grandpa used to buy the orginal million?
Any examples of kids losing the farm or business they inherited from daddy? Let’s say you’re broke and win a $70,000 Mercedes on a game show but the damned gubmint considers that income and you have to pay 15% tax on the amount over $40,000, or $4500. What to do? You could sell it, pay your taxes but only be ahead $65,500.
Only 0.2% of estates are subject to the Estate Tax because of exemptions. If you want to exempt small business and farms or raise the exemption level, just have the Repuds submit the legislation.
The laws are intended to tax the Paris Hiltons when they receive $100,000,000 of largely untaxed gains from daddy. Again, the first $10.9 million is tax free! But she would pay some $35,000,000 on the next $90,000,000. To recap, on money she did not earn, she would get $65,000,000 free and clear, and have to pay about $35,000,000. And you object to that?
In an unusually blunt letter, a group of federal scientists is complaining to the Obama transition team of widespread managerial misconduct in a division of the Food and Drug Administration.
….
“Managers with incompatible, discordant and irrelevant scientific and clinical expertise in devices…have ignored serious safety and effectiveness concerns of FDA experts,” the letter said. “Managers have ordered, intimidated and coerced FDA experts to modify scientific evaluations, conclusions and recommendations in violation of the laws, rules and regulations, and to accept clinical and technical data that is not scientifically valid.”
That misconduct happens isn’t shocking. What is: When the FDA finds scientific fraud or misconduct, the agency doesn’t notify the public, the medical establishment, or even the scientific community that the results of a medical experiment are not to be trusted. On the contrary. For more than a decade, the FDA has shown a pattern of burying the details of misconduct. As a result, nobody ever finds out which data is bogus, which experiments are tainted, and which drugs might be on the market under false pretenses. The FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud not just from the public, but also from its most trusted scientific advisers, even as they were deciding whether or not a new drug should be allowed on the market. Even a congressional panel investigating a case of fraud regarding a dangerous drug couldn’t get forthright answers. For an agency devoted to protecting the public from bogus medical science, the FDA seems to be spending an awful lot of effort protecting the perpetrators of bogus science from the public.
Based on critical information gathered from hundreds of leaked emails, pharmaceutical companies have doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to attend private meetings with the FDA, many of which were geared towards the regulation and approval of painkiller drugs. Drug companies would reportedly shell out upwards of $25,000 or more per meeting to have their voices heard, a small price to pay for direct access to the $9 billion American painkiller market.
According to the WP, officials from both the FDA and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) would regularly meet with pharmaceutical representatives in private to discuss regulatory protocols, co-write scientific papers and collaborate on various ways to help streamline the drug approval process. And the only parties who actually paid to attend such meetings were the drug companies, a fact that one official from the NIH expressed serious concerns about in an email, referring to the whole scheme as a “pay to play process.”
A new article with title of “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs” is set to be published in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics (JLME). The article written by Prof. Donald W. Light, Joel Lexchin, and Jonathan J. Darrow present evidence that about 90% of all new drugs approved by FDA over the last 30 years have little or no advantages compared to the existing drugs.
The article points out how FDA who supposedly must be in charge of public health and safety is nothing more than a puppet ran by giant pharmaceutical and drug companies. The fact is that the medical industry has become a leading cause of death and just in US, annually, 12,000 people die due to unnecessary surgeries, 7,000 people die due to medical errors, 20,000 people die due to other errors, 80,000 people die from infections acquired at the hospitals and 106,000 people die from adverse side effect of medications.
Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, her hedge-fund executive husband, and Fortune 500 giant Johnson & Johnson colluded to enrich themselves by failing to warn the public about a “deadly†antibiotic, a federal racketeering lawsuit claims.
“Once confirmed as FDA commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg acted as the instrumentality that all defendants used to perpetrate their conspiracy and racketeering enterprise by having her act illegally and outside the scope of her authority as FDA commissioner to suppress material information to plaintiffs and the public that Levaquin was inherently dangerous and in fact, deadly,†the complaint alleges.
In an unusually blunt letter, a group of federal scientists is complaining to the Obama transition team of widespread managerial misconduct in a division of the Food and Drug Administration.
….
“Managers with incompatible, discordant and irrelevant scientific and clinical expertise in devices…have ignored serious safety and effectiveness concerns of FDA experts,” the letter said. “Managers have ordered, intimidated and coerced FDA experts to modify scientific evaluations, conclusions and recommendations in violation of the laws, rules and regulations, and to accept clinical and technical data that is not scientifically valid.”
That misconduct happens isn’t shocking. What is: When the FDA finds scientific fraud or misconduct, the agency doesn’t notify the public, the medical establishment, or even the scientific community that the results of a medical experiment are not to be trusted. On the contrary. For more than a decade, the FDA has shown a pattern of burying the details of misconduct. As a result, nobody ever finds out which data is bogus, which experiments are tainted, and which drugs might be on the market under false pretenses. The FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud not just from the public, but also from its most trusted scientific advisers, even as they were deciding whether or not a new drug should be allowed on the market. Even a congressional panel investigating a case of fraud regarding a dangerous drug couldn’t get forthright answers. For an agency devoted to protecting the public from bogus medical science, the FDA seems to be spending an awful lot of effort protecting the perpetrators of bogus science from the public.
Based on critical information gathered from hundreds of leaked emails, pharmaceutical companies have doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years to attend private meetings with the FDA, many of which were geared towards the regulation and approval of painkiller drugs. Drug companies would reportedly shell out upwards of $25,000 or more per meeting to have their voices heard, a small price to pay for direct access to the $9 billion American painkiller market.
According to the WP, officials from both the FDA and the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) would regularly meet with pharmaceutical representatives in private to discuss regulatory protocols, co-write scientific papers and collaborate on various ways to help streamline the drug approval process. And the only parties who actually paid to attend such meetings were the drug companies, a fact that one official from the NIH expressed serious concerns about in an email, referring to the whole scheme as a “pay to play process.”
A new article with title of “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs” is set to be published in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics (JLME). The article written by Prof. Donald W. Light, Joel Lexchin, and Jonathan J. Darrow present evidence that about 90% of all new drugs approved by FDA over the last 30 years have little or no advantages compared to the existing drugs.
The article points out how FDA who supposedly must be in charge of public health and safety is nothing more than a puppet ran by giant pharmaceutical and drug companies. The fact is that the medical industry has become a leading cause of death and just in US, annually, 12,000 people die due to unnecessary surgeries, 7,000 people die due to medical errors, 20,000 people die due to other errors, 80,000 people die from infections acquired at the hospitals and 106,000 people die from adverse side effect of medications.
Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, her hedge-fund executive husband, and Fortune 500 giant Johnson & Johnson colluded to enrich themselves by failing to warn the public about a “deadly†antibiotic, a federal racketeering lawsuit claims.
“Once confirmed as FDA commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg acted as the instrumentality that all defendants used to perpetrate their conspiracy and racketeering enterprise by having her act illegally and outside the scope of her authority as FDA commissioner to suppress material information to plaintiffs and the public that Levaquin was inherently dangerous and in fact, deadly,†the complaint alleges.
“Eliminating your list of petty grievances on regs will not lead to full employment”
How do we judge the value of a public policy proposal? If it’s a conservative proposal, the test is, “Will it instantly and totally solve all the problems in the world?” If the answer is no, then it’s a bad proposal.
OF COURSE no one of the items on gitarcarver’s list will have a huge impact on unemployment. OF COURSE even all put together will not instantly and totally end unemployment. But if we repealed these counter-productive regulations, and a few thousand others like them, it would have a dramatic effect on unemployment. Would it reduce it to zero? Of course not. But we’d be much better off.
Note that liberals never apply this reasoning to their own proposals. When Obama was pushing is Iran deal, he made a speech where he said, sure, it won’t end all the problems in the Middle East, but it’s a step in the right direction. I doubt it was a step in the right direction, but that’s a reasonable argument. If someone has a proposal that really will solve all the problems in the world all at once, I’m sure we’d all like to hear it. In the meantime, the practical question is, Will this make things better or worse?
BTW when juding liberal proposals, of course the only valid criterion is, Did the people who proposed it have good intentions? Conservatives often get confused about this. They’ll point out that a government program costs huge amounts of money for a tiny benefit, or that it has serious negative side effects, or that it does no good at all and just makes the problem worse. These are irrelevant, carping criticisms, as they have nothing to do with the relevant question, Did we have good intentions? If the liberals had good intentions, than no matter how things turn out, it was a good policy, and should be continued and expanded regardless of whether it is doing any good or not. Because it is doing good, in the most important possible way: It helps liberals feel good about themselves because they’re “doing something”.
The truth is a talking point?
Are you really claiming that the money that is given by a parent to a child is not taxed when the parent earns it and then again when it is given to the child?
Actually the rate is much higher than you are quoting in total taxes, but that doesn’t address the point as to why the government should get a cut to begin with?
Since you brought up game shows, why should the government advertise a lottery jackpot of millions of dollars only to take a good portion of that back when the jackpot is won?
In your scenario with the car, can you imagine the outcry of after winning the car, the game show only delivered half the car saying “you owe us the rest?”
Go back and listen to the 2013 hearings on the subject.
Once again your argument is based on 1) the government needs money and 2) people who have money are somehow evil.
Oh, and once again, regulations are often job killers and therefore add to unemployment.
“How is taxing capital gains taxing anything twice? That’s a talking point, not an argument.
Grandpa Drumpf buys $1 million of ACME Widget stock, holds for 20 years, dies and Pa Drumpf inherits $10 million of ACME Widget. He holds it for 20 years, dies and daughter Paris Drumpf inherits what is now $100 million worth of ACME Widget. When was it taxed? On the wages that Grandpa used to buy the orginal million?”
Umm, yes. Consider an example that most people can relate to more easily: buying a house.
So you get a job and save money to buy a house. You pay income taxes on that money. Then you buy the house, let’s say for $100,000. Then you pay property taxes on the house as long as you own it. Where I live that would be about $2,000 a year. Let’s assume you make no major additions or renovations, just routine maintenance, so it’s the same house as long as you own it. Some maintenance requires you to get a building permit, which is another form of tax. When you retire, you move to a rest home or a smaller home, but you can’t sell the house, so after sitting on it for five years (maybe renting it out for some or all of that time) you decide to sell it. Because of inflation the market value is now $150,000. So when you sell it, you have a paper gain of $50,000, and you have to pay capital gains tax on that. You decide to give the profits to your children. You pay gift tax.
So you paid taxes on the income when you earned it. You paid fees to the government when you bought the house, additional taxes. You paid property tax every year you owned it. You paid building permit fees, another tax. You paid capital gains tax when you sold it. You paid gift tax when you gave the money to your children. You’ve paid taxes on the same money at least 6 times.
“Our detailed corporate budgets never have line items for regulations. We specify how much we intend to spend on IT services. Travel. Consultants. But not gov’t regulations.”
So … are you claiming that this somehow proves that government regulations cost you zero? More realistically, it simply proves that you have failed to track how much government regulations cost you.
Let’s take a simple example: I bought a new water heater recently. Gas water heaters used to cost about $100 to $150. But then some idiot stuck his hand into the flame and burned himself, so the government came out with new safety regulations saying that gas water heaters could not have exposed flames. Even though I’m not stupid enough to stick my hand in an open flame, I have to buy a water heater meeting these requirements. Of course it’s not just a matter of putting a casing around the flame, because now you have to have a way to get air in to support combustion despite being walled off. There has to be a way to light it even though you can’t reach the flame with a match. There’s a mess of details to make the more complex design work and be reliable. So now a gas water heater costs more like $200 to $300.
That particular government regulation cost me $150 for no discernable benefit.
If I was keeping formal accounting books, I’d put down “replacement water heater – $300”. I wouldn’t normally make separate entries, like “reasonable cost for a water heater – $150” and “additional cost because of useless government regulations – $150”. That’s not how people keep books.
So yeah, I don’t doubt that your company doesn’t have a line item in its accounting books for regulatory costs. That’s because they show up eveywhere, in everything you buy, and often you don’t even know how much of your cost is due to government regulations.
Do you really not know this? You say you run a business and you honestly think that government regulations cost you zero? If you want to say that the safety improvements or protection of civil rights or whatever are worth the increased cost to business, that would at least be debateable. But to say these costs don’t exist is just absurd.
I’m sure liberals will just reply that this shows how badly George Bush screwed up the economy. Obama’s been working on it for 7 years and he still hasn’t fixed all the problems Bush caused! And if a Republican wins the next election and the economy improves, they’ll say he’s just living off all the good policies put in place by Obama.
gitarcarver posts another Gish Gallop to support his contention that the FDA is corrupt. You supply a couple of links to unsubstantiated allegations, some repeated comments, and several links to actual mistakes and dishonest acts, mostly by physicians involved in studies, some by drug companies. By the way, these dishonest acts were rooted out by FDA investigations!
In one case the breathless author concludes the fraudulent activity at a Chinese clinical site should have invalidated the entire study and the FDA didn’t do that!! There were 37 patients enrolled at the Chinese site, but over 8000 total patients enrolled worldwide!!
If gitarcarver’s point was that big money in pharmaceuticals has corrupted drug development, he has a case. The international patent system has removed the free market constraints on pharm, and the gov’t enforced monopoly makes a successful drug worth billions of USD. In the US we spend over $400 billion on pharmaceuticals each year. This makes the temptation to cheat very great – and the FDA stands between big pharma companies and the patients.
Is your point that there is too much regulation or not enough?
jay,
How often do you replace your water heater? If the previous was 10 years old, it doesn’t seem too outrageous that the price increased from $150 to $300, especially with improved technology, efficiency and safety.
Does it bother you that Americans pay an extra unnecessary $300 billion for drugs each year? And not because of regulations but from a patent system that that rewards pharma.
Your argument about hidden costs of regulations is reasonable.
Except for the fact that they weren’t rooted out by the FDA, you would be correct. It was easy to find corruption in the FDA, Jeffery. So contrary to your assertion that the FDA is on top of everything, they are not.
The point is that the FDA is corrupt.
The point is that more regulations does not result in honesty or actual benefits to the American public.
You work for an industry that is corrupt and you support that corruption because it benefits you.
Stumpy,
You have not proven your point, for the reasons you didn’t address.
Why did Republican voters repudiate the conservative movement by nominating Trump?
Trump is a racist, xenophobic misogynist and he does support cutting
his taxestaxes for the wealthy, but he doesn’t seem to believe in gutting Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security as the movement conservatives do; nor does he demonize LGBT (yet). In fact, cutting payments for Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps and Social Security is the raison d’etre of movement conservatives.So why did primary voters reject movement conservatives like Cruz, Kasich and Rubio to nominate an unelectable faux strongman?
Is it because the voters don’t support the House movement conservatives and their drive to gut entitlement programs that the voters like and rely on?
Coupled with Republican’s inherent fear of the “other” we get Trump.
It is not my fault or problem that you can’t read or refuse to acknowledge anything that is contrary to your beliefs.
You claimed the FDA was corrupt but only supplied a couple of accusatory opinion pieces, linked to a number of FDA 483 investigation reports.
If you had an argument we suspect you would make it.
How long will you be able to blame Bush from the failures of government since he left office?
All Presidents leave a legacy of both good and bad. Reagan instilled confidence in Americans again but started the devastation of the working classes. Clinton oversaw the expansion of the economy (partly by luck) and didn’t invade anyone, but pushed NAFTA and the deregulation of Wall Street gangsterism. W was solid following 9/11 but invaded Iraq, further helped the wealthy and twiddled his thumbs as the real bubble inflated.
President Obama turned a serious recession into the worse recovery in US history with his economy killing policies and actions. Stop blaming President Bush, who was nothing special on the economy, but compared to President Obama he was an economic genius,
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