Anyone catch the license plate?

[joe3pack]

[nymphcaster]

I didn't see anywhere in any of the proposed "reforms" that government was taking over the system. More like some tweaks around the edges. This is not national health care. The drug, insurance, and health care delivery companies still own the system, and still largely control the government. This legislation will be designed to give them more, not less.

 

We are governed by a vast criminal enterprise, in which the people acquiesce.

 

Corporations rule the western "democracies" and Latin American banana republics, military collective dictatorships with whom the corporations are happy to do business, rule the east, and repressive theocracies cover the rest. We face a future devoid of hope for anyone paying attention. The smart ones among us are the ones who stick their heads in the sand and go about their lives, oblivious to the theft, manipulation, and cynicism of the corporate governing structure. We are all little more than cannon fodder to the corporate managerial class, most of whom are vicious sociopaths.

 

Actually, for those of us paying attention there's only one logical path to take. Suicide. Fortunately, most of us are not that rational.

 

So don't think for a second that health care "reform" really means "reform". Like everything else it will be a scheme designed solely to protect the income streams of the corporate managers-- the criminal syndicate, La Corpora Nostra.

 

 

Wow. I wasn't mentioning any vast criminal enterprise. You should have an *** (starts with a vowel) and other corporate ilk rant I haven't even thought of. I wasn't even considering sociopaths or criminal exterprises. I was just mentioning a new valuation perspective that might last for 20 years. Where drugs become like grocery, with equivalent margins, but with some adjustments regarding costs, because one involves a stock (like a celery stock) and the other requires some innovation (hopefully) but costs more than planting a seed to grow another duplicate in real life. Your suicide reference flew over my head. Hell, you live in Canada, which from here, is an aspirational place.

[DrStool]

Or just say: To hell with the sense of it all. Just go for the money. Pay the silly taxes. Donate to some charities.

 

Let others overthink the problems of the world

 

Work the system. Why try to change it?

 

[* I admit that this might be a GEN-Y point of view.]

 

I am constitutionally incapable of "working the system."

 

I bought a PDA for my wife for Christmas, not understanding that Verizon would slam me with hundreds of dollars of charges for background data downloads even though I never connected to the internet. Something about the device having to communicate with the internet all the time. I am refusing to pay, and they are refusing to remove the charges. Offered me 50% off. I even went so far as to write to the CEO, and got a response. Then he kicks it down a level, and I get the 50% off offer. So I guess I'll just keep paying for the phone usage and refusing to pay for the data until they cut me off. When that happens, I'll throw the damn device in the toilet. And when they turn it over to collections, I'll yell and scream at the collection agents, scare the hell out of them enough so that they'll leave me alone.

 

By the way, any good class action lawyers out there interested in this. I am quite certain that Verizon has defrauded thousands of customers out of millions of dollars this way. It's a complete scam.

 

I am just so tired of having to deal with these immoral, cheating, lying bastards all the time.

 

Is there no honor left in the world? No justice? No morality? If not, then there is NO HOPE.

[DrStool]

Wow. I wasn't mentioning any vast criminal enterprise. You should have an *** (starts with a vowel) and other corporate ilk rant I haven't even thought of. I wasn't even considering sociopaths or criminal exterprises. I was just mentioning a new valuation perspective that might last for 20 years. Where drugs become like grocery, with equivalent margins, but with some adjustments regarding costs, because one involves a stock (like a celery stock) and the other requires some innovation (hopefully) but costs more than planting a seed to grow another duplicate in real life. Your suicide reference flew over my head. Hell, you live in Canada, which from here, is an aspirational place.

 

I live in Florida. I am a native born US citizen and I have lived in the US all my life. I vote in the US. I pay taxes in the US. I am in Florida right now. I have a second home in Canada, which is my wife's homeland. Canada has its problems, and it is rife with corruption as well, but the country is light years ahead of the US in terms of social consciousness. But even there, the corporate criminals get away with an awful lot. They are quite happy to let the government take care of the health care mess. They find other ways to steal.

 

By the way, you are wrong about there being no innovation in food. Food processing is constantly evolving with new products all the time. My brother-in-law is in that business, and the variety of innovation in foods is astounding. There's a lot more honest R&D in food production than in drugs. Most of the R&D in drugs is designed to extend patents by making slight changes in formulations, not to develop new and better medicines. This is another huge scam foisted upon the American people. Let research be government funded, so that we can make real progress instead of wasting billions on moving molecules from one side of a compound to another, then wasting billions more selling the "new, improved" version on the drug on TV, and with an army of good looking young women barging into doctors offices during patient hours.

 

It's criminal.

[psyche doctor]

Homicide would not work. You couldn't get to the bad guys. Besides, if you could get to them, I'd prefer tar and feathers in the public square.

 

Seems like the Spoos have given a bunch back. But it's the night session.

 

Yes, better to keep them alive and make them wish they weren't. Massive, unrelenting doses of brutalizing pain and torment.

 

NQ bounced off key 1467

 

ES above 911

[nymphcaster]

I live in Florida. I am a native born US citizen. I vote in the US. I pay taxes in the US. I have a second home in Canada, which is my wife's homeland. Canada has its problems, and it is rife with corruption as well, but the country is light years ahead of the US in terms of social consciousness. But even there, the corporate criminals get away with an awful lot. They are quite happy to let the government take care of the health care mess. They find other ways to steal.

 

By the way, you are wrong about there being no innovation in food. Food processing is constantly evolving with new products all the time. My brother-in-law is in that business, and the variety of innovation in foods is astounding. There's a lot more honest R&D in food production than in drugs. Most of the R&D in drugs is designed to extend patents by making slight changes in formulations, not to develop new and better medicines. This is another huge scam foisted upon the American people. Let research be government funded, so that we can make real progress instead of wasting billions on moving molecules from one side of a compound to another, then wasting billions more selling the "new, improved" version on the drug on TV, and with an army of good looking young women barging into doctors offices during patient hours.

 

It's criminal.

 

I never said there was no innovation in food. What I said was that I expect drug margins to become more like food margins, but with a slight jolt because growing a celery stock is a lot cheaper than running a new drug through all the tests. And it that sense, I was hinting that I think that, giving the risks and rewards, absent a good margin for innovation and the presense of generics, don't expect drug rewards to be better than grocery margins.

 

If you are broke as a country, you are not going to permit XX% margins, unless concerned about all the holders of stock (all state pension plans holding it, etc). Instead you permit X% margin (one X) because as the government, you need to compress margins, because you are broke.

 

If you think back many years, a bunch of hoopla over investing in drug strocks. The theory was all us elderly folks getting older. A total gold mine! they cried. Now we are much older, and the drug stocks suck on a return basis. So I ask, if you don't buy my thoughts, what are yours? I see them going down (and being priced at a near grocery equivalent). You can price them higher. But why write about people doing suicide and vast criminal conspiracies and telling me food is static, which I don't think? Why not just talk numbers? What is your food margin and what is your drug margin?

[psyche doctor]

then wasting billions more selling the "new, improved" version on the drug on TV, and with an army of good looking young women barging into doctors offices during patient hours.

 

It's criminal.

 

I have known many of these women you speak so highly of. From my experience, most have some common characteristics - were good looking, seductive, shallow, hystrionic, manipulative, deceitful, self centered, materialistic etc....

[howard in nyc]

wow, doc. you are really preaching some good truth tonight.

 

I am constitutionally incapable of "working the system."

i consider what you do, educating and informing via your wse reports and the message board, as a positive form of 'working the system'. what term would you prefer?

 

i consider it not only possible, but essential for my personal makeup, to be "in it but not of it". it wasn't my fault i was born into one america, but over time our country changed the way it did business.

 

I am just so tired of having to deal with these immoral, cheating, lying bastards all the time.

 

Is there no honor left in the world? No justice? No morality?

yeah. there is some. many people are still good. often i am pleasantly surprised how much remains of those virtues. less than before. still enough to warrant hope.

 

and, i will admit, i like looking at those little girls when they pop in to the office to sell their stupid overpriced drugs. they don't like me though. i tend to speak as frankly as does doc. they seem to think that impolite.

 

they do literally recruit them from college cheerleading squads.

[capitall]

wow, doc. you are really preaching some good truth tonight.

 

 

i consider what you do, educating and informing via your wse reports and the message board, as a positive form of 'working the system'. what term would you prefer?

 

i consider it not only possible, but essential for my personal makeup, to be "in it but not of it". it wasn't my fault i was born into one america, but over time our country changed the way it did business.

 

 

yeah. there is some. many people are still good. often i am pleasantly surprised how much remains of those virtues. less than before. still enough to warrant hope.

 

and, i will admit, i like looking at those little girls when they pop in to the office to sell their stupid overpriced drugs. they don't like me though. i tend to speak as frankly as does doc. they seem to think that impolite.

 

they do literally recruit them from college cheerleading squads.

 

There are MANY good people still left in the U.S. and the world. If we can get some campaign finance reform, and some citizens assemblies together for choosing people who would make true public servants, then we could throw out the corporate servants from government and get constructive honest problem-solver type people. You can't expect politicians to be good right now, because good folks usually can't afford to finance their re-election campaigns, because the only way to do that is through corporate contributions. Change that and every other good kind of change can then follow.

 

I don't see as much criminal activity as you see, Doc. Most of this stuff is perfectly legal. With campaigns legally financed by corporations, it is perfectly legal for them to bribe Congress and have lobbyists write the legislation regarding their own industries. If campaigns were financed only by the taxpayers, things could be very different.

 

We give banks, pharmaceutical corporations etc. an engraved invitation to bribe Congress to do their bidding. Is it any surprise that they RSVP Yes?