Economics

Will abramoff rollover?

This entry was posted in Campaign Finance Constitution Democracy Democrats Domestic Terrorism Economics Federal Government Government on by

There appears to be a good chance that abramoff will rollover on his former associates:

Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say.
Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a “unique resource.”
Other people involved in the case or who have been officially briefed on it said the talks had reached a tense phase, with each side mindful of the date Jan. 9, when Mr. Abramoff is scheduled to stand trial in Miami in a separate prosecution.
What began as a limited inquiry into $82 million of Indian casino lobbying by Mr. Abramoff and his closest partner, Michael Scanlon, has broadened into a far-reaching corruption investigation of mainly Republican lawmakers and aides suspected of accepting favors in exchange for legislative work.

It would be a good thing if this snares some dems as well. Perhaps people will begin understanding the kind of culture that evolves when you create a mob wealth transfer machine the size of the us federal government and that the smaller wealth transfer operations at the city, county and state level are simply breeding grounds for the scumsects at the federal level.
Via Raw Story.

Disengaging From the Drug War

This entry was posted in Domestic Terrorism Drug Laws Economics Law Law Enforcement Libertarianism on by

Earlier this month the King Count Bar Assocation (WA) held a drug policy conference titled Exit Strategy for the War on Drugs: Toward A New Legal Framework. In a followup opinion piece Seattle Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey wrote that although the conference attendees seemed to agree that the prohibition should end they had some problems with the next step:

Prohibition had failed. Drug laws had not stopped Americans from getting drugs; it simply made them get drugs from criminals. But if not from criminals, then from whom? On marijuana, they could not agree.

Some of the attendees wanted to make sure that the same government that has demonstrated such dramatic failure in the war on drugs was rewarded by having a monopoly on the distribution of marijuana:

The idea of any corporate control is troubling to me,” said Deborah Small, a New York activist who proposed to give marijuana distribution to the government.

Might a government monoply reap monopolistic windfall profits? Well, sure:

Much of the crowd was tolerant of intoxication but not of profit. They would replace police and jailers with doctors and social workers. The Dutch scene, with private-branded marijuana in private-sector cafes, was too commercial for them. Too fun. They would give marijuana oversight to the Washington State Liquor Control Board.
Merrit Long, chairman of that august monopoly, told the conference the state’s profit was $200 million on $600 million of sales.

Heck, even Microsoft doesn’t make that kind of margin. Unless they propose to continue the prohibition on growing marijuana, which doesn’t quite seem like an end of the drug war, then folks will just plant those seeds of BC bud in their gardens and bypass the government monopoly.
Initially the best way to keep corporations out of the business is this: only allow individuals or partnerships to produce, distribute and sell the goods. Over a longer period corporations can be kept out by eliminating the laws that facilitate the existience of the modern corporate structure.
Ramsey closes with this:

But I, too, fall into the trap of looking for a system that would align the rules with what Americans actually do. Americans don’t want that. Drug prohibition reflects our ideal of a sober America, and it is politically impossible to abandon that.
Yet life continues. We legislate nationally and ignore locally. We have our own version of Holland, really, except that ours is harsher than theirs, and does not attract tourists.

Excuse me but whose idea of a sober America? All those folks with their 6-packs and liquor cabinets? Bruce, you’ll have a better chance of convincing us that we have an ideal of sober America when no congress critter drinks, when liquor sales have dropped to nil. Nope, drug prohibition reflects a misuse of government power and the disproportionate power of those who make their livings off the drug war.
Let’s retire all the drug terrorists warriors now!
NB: Well known blogger Mark Kleiman was a participant at the conference.

In Hock to the World

This entry was posted in Economics on by

The US exported $107.5 billion in goods and services in November. Well, at least we are exporting something as we go into hock: imports were a tidy $176.4 billion. Brad DeLong comments:

Each month the trade deficit gets bigger makes it more and more likely that we will have serious macroeconomic trouble when America’s savings and investment flows start to come back into balance

Kash has more details that show the China is not the only country carrying a large amount of US debt.
Are we watching the last wimper of a superpower?

Bad News for Deadheads

This entry was posted in Archive.org Economics GD Information Intellectual Property on by

In a nutshell, the pioneers of music trading appear to have joined the dinosaurs of the recording industry. Read and weep (there were 2300 shows here yesterday).
I’ve downloaded only a few complete GD shows from the Archive, streamed quite a few more, bought many commercial releases over the years including the just shipping 1969 Box Set (why hasn’t it arrived yet) and never, ever traded one of the Dead’s commercial releases. And still won’t. But I also will not be adding any new commercial releases to my collection for a while, if ever again…hell, I don’t even get close to cycling through my collection once every 5 years.
The music is theirs to control however they want. However, if they want to change the culture I can damn well change my buying habits.
Update: David Gans has some thoughts to share.

Where’s My Aspirin?

This entry was posted in Economics Education Health Care on by

Should aspirin, acetominophen or penicillin be used? Derek Lowe argues that today not only would they not be approved by the FDA they likely would not even be submitted for approval:

The best example is aspirin itself. It’s one of the foundation stones of the drug industry, and it’s hard to even guess how many billions of doses of it have been taken over the last hundred years. But if you were somehow able to change history so that aspirin had never been discovered until this year, I can guarantee you that it would have died in the lab. No modern drug development organization would touch it.

I don’t know about you but I would be very unhappy not to have aspirin, etc., in my home arsenal and I had more than one childhood infection cleared by penicillin. On the other hand I have seen first hand the frightening experience of an allergic reaction to one of penicillin’s offspring.
I do, though, lean in the same direction as Lowe:

We can be relieved that we’ve learned so much more about pharmacology, ensuring that the drugs that manage to gain approval today are the safer than ever. Or we can think about how people seem to use aspirin and the other legacy drugs anyway, safety problems and all, and wonder how many more useful medicines we’re losing by insisting on a higher bar.
I definitely see the point of the former, but I lean a bit toward the latter.

The final informed choice on drug use should be made by a well informed patient. If the patient is being treated by a medical professional responsibility for providing the full set of information on a course of treatment belongs to the medical professional. If the patient is self-treating then the patient is responsible for acquiring the information. In both cases it is the patient who must make the final evaluation of a course of treatment.
That many people are not competent to make these evaluations and decisions is one of the great failings of our culture, our education system and our health care system.
Via Marginal Revolution.