Monday, June 19, 2006

The Party with No Agenda fakes conviction

Tom Maguire: “After the 2002 Dem debacle, observers noted complained that you can't beat something with nothing. Here we go again.”

Frank Rich in the NY Times (!): “But as long as the Democrats keep repeating their own mistakes, they will lose to the party whose mistakes are, if nothing else, packaged as one heckuva show. It's better to have the courage of bad convictions than no courage or convictions at all.”

Polipundit: “This strategy exposes them as the power-hungry cowards they are. If you don’t stand for anything, you’ll fall in November.”

Michael Barone: “Good news puts things in a different light and raises the question of just what Democrats would do if in power.”

This past week, Congressional Democrats rolled out their long-awaited agenda for governance, the “New Direction.” Here’s DCCC chair Rahm Emanuel explaining the specifics of “Six in ‘06”:

Gigot: Good. So let's assume you do win in November. What's the first priority--legislative priority--you're going to bring to Congress come January?
Emanuel: In the opening you mentioned the new direction. What we call it is the "Six in '06": increase in the minimum wage; direct negotiations for lower prescription drug prices; a vote on the 9/11 Commission recommendations to make America safe; take the $15 billion in corporate subsidies to big oil and put it towards energy independence; seventh, or rather fifth, is take--restore the cuts in college education, that were 12 1/2 billion dollars in cuts, and make those go back towards opening the doors of college education, and then the pay-go rules as it relates to budget, to put our fiscal house in order and put us on a path to balancing the budget--Six in '06.
For starters, let’s focus on the negotiations for lower drug prices. Excuse my naiveté but I don’t understand how this would work. Due to patent laws, the pharmaceutical companies have exclusive rights to their product; they can charge whatever they wish.

Nancy Pelosi: “$2 per pill for Lipitor is too much. We want it lower.”
Pfizer: “No.”
Then what? As Lawrence Hunter speculates, price “negotiations” would morph into price controls followed by all the vagaries they entail, particularly supply shortages. Pharmaceutical companies, which spend millions to develop drugs, will cut back on life-saving medicines that will face the most price pressure to market pills for toe fungus. The Democrats never miss an opportunity to savage big business, especially pharamaceuticals and petroleum, but rarely constructs policy to help the businesses we all depend upon. This "new direction" is looking depressingly like their old direction.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, somebody has to stand up for Pfizer and Exxon's PAC-given right to do whatever they please. Fight the power!

This is just like when Philip Morris stopped manufacturing cigarettes cold, because of onerous settlements, increased government oversight, lower profit margins, and an unfriendly business model being imposed on them from th...... oh.

Reliapundit said...

eric;

the problem is not that the dems don't have convictions; the problem is they can;t run and win on their REAL convictions: socialism at home, appeasement abroad.

the only war the dems REALLY want to to fight is class war.

the only allies they really want to support are the enemies of the USA and capitalism and globalism.

they CLAIM to be for the underclass worldwide, but leftist polices have been proven to be the road to serfdom - less freedom and less prosperity.

if they were to run on their reall convictions then they would sound more like gorbachev and binladen and sheehan and moore and mugabe and fidel then JFK.

so instead we get garbled, veiled pseudo-policies instended to make them seem tough on national defense and as if the has a new "third way" on economic policies.

in fact - by all rational and standardized measures - globalization, free trade, industrialism - what might be caled "Westernization" is the road to prosperity and liberty.

IOW: there is no third way. there is the american way or the road to serfdom.

BUT, as long as they have the MSM and the academy, they can be assured of good press for themselves, bad press for Hayekian anti-Marxists and "neocons" (who are after all actually classical/authentic Liberals), and a steady supply of misguided youths to refill their ranks.

that's the LONGTERM key to trassforming America is demolishing the Left's stranglehold on the MSM and the academy. (and not merely winning the next election.)

although for the GWOT, the next election is CRITICAL: if the dems get cointrol of the House they will do to the Iraqis and Afghanis and lebanese and Israelis what they did to the South Vietnamese and the Contras.

And this will directly aid the enemy.

they don;t care if this is the dirct effectr becasue i feel they secretly - or unconsciously - WANT the USA to lose, feeling that it would be a needed chastizement of the GOP and the Right and just as importantly "Western Hubris."


i know: i was raised a leftits by card-carrying commies and have been a registered dem since 1974.

[my journey from marxist to "hayekianist" (not unlike swrisky's) took some time, and a great deal of honesty. which is why i ahve hope that we can and will ultimatley defeat Leftism. which is why my second favorite saying is: "To make poverty history, we have to make Leftism history." My favorite saying is: "propserity is the by-product of Liberty." You can quote me.]

all the best!

Anonymous said...

the problem is ...socialism at home, appeasement abroad...class war...support the enemies of the USA... road to serfdom...less freedom and less...gorbachev... binladen... mugabe... fidel... garbled, veiled pseudo-policies
is the road to prosperity and liberty... road to serfdom... the MSM and the academy... misguided... Left's stranglehold on the MSM and the academy....South Vietnamese and the Contras....directly aid the enemy....they secretly WANT the USA to lose...card-carrying commies...


Phew!
This first-person shooter simulation you're stuck in, is it a private game? Or can any fantasy-lover play?

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, Klaus, got a linky thing to the place where a cap was put on cigarette prices? (Supply/demand? We doan need no stinkin' supply/demand, we got *negotiations and price caps*). (I know, I know. You were being funny.)

Pac-Man: nice refutation. Oh. You didn't refute any of reliapundit's comments. Just snark. Are you Marxist-trained? If that a multiplayer role game? Do you have 9th level Druid powers? Are you still living in Mom's basement and 'sharing the wealth'?

Anonymous said...

As for the "negotiate prices," you're right. They mean price controls. The thing about pharmacuticals (sp?) and a lot of other research-intensive products is the marginal cost to make and sell one more unit is very small compared to the amortized cost of R&D. If $2 per pill covers everything (R&D, production, marketing,etc.), then, perhaps, the marginal cost is $.50. If Medicare says we will pay $.55 or you don't go on the formulary (the list of drugs Medicare pays for) or you go on a lower tier of the formulary, then Pfizer might just say, we'll take $.05 gross profit per unit and make up our R&D elsewhere. The problem is, Pfizer can't fund future R&D without the profit from the current drugs, and even if they could, why would they if they can't make the profit? Medicare part D will be a HUGE portion of their sales for the old-folks-type drugs.

Enacting Medicaid price controls would probably save Medicaid huge amounts of money. However, it could go a long way to killing off Pharma R&D for aging-related drugs.

Anonymous said...

"price controls" is pure socialism.

we know where that leads.

it is not theoretical: the ussr and red china and india and ireland - and north and south korea - PROVE that socialism is the literal road to a lower standard of living, a lower quality of life. and less freedom.

the nations which have more liberty have more prosperity, lower unemployment, etc.

prosperity is and always has been - a by-product of liberty.

BTW: after two-terms of the new deal unemployment was HIGHER than when FDR took office. WHY?! simple: socialism has ALWAYS failed.

so.... why do some people advocate a system which makes people less free and less wealthy!?

because it EMPOWERS them.

they don't want the invisible hand of the market to operate; they want an elite (they pick) to decide what the price/value of things/goods/services/people should be.

hillary said as much in that speech in SF last year.

Anonymous said...

Well put. Hillary should go live in Communist Ireland.

Anonymous said...

Waah waah waah waaaaaah.