rigorousintuition.ca

We shall see

Stickdawg, Harv and Jack - I concede that AOC may be more 'real' than I had given her credit. I should keep my nose out of politics until such time I have something new to offer.

AOC is one of 435 House members, and a freshman at that. This talk of "when she comes to power" is funny. "She'll turn out just like Obama."

stickdog99 wrote:the ideas she communicates are critically important to disseminate to the widest possible audience.

Thank you for this breath of sanity.

Of course, the same people who believe that the titles of scientific journal articles are nonsense phrases written to bamboozle the public with terms the pathetic plebes could never hope to understand, will find some way to assert that the MIC/PTB want to indoctrinate you with egalitarian ideas and that we must resist these ideas.

Of course, the same people who believe that the titles of scientific journal articles are nonsense phrases written to bamboozle the public with terms the pathetic plebes could never hope to understand

NDeGT is still a tosser

Elvis wrote:AOC is one of 435 House members, and a freshman at that. This talk of "when she comes to power" is funny. "She'll turn out just like Obama."

stickdog99 wrote:the ideas she communicates are critically important to disseminate to the widest possible audience.

Thank you for this breath of sanity.

Of course, the same people who believe that the titles of scientific journal articles are nonsense phrases written to bamboozle the public with terms the pathetic plebes could never hope to understand, will find some way to assert that the MIC/PTB want to indoctrinate you with egalitarian ideas and that we must resist these ideas.

You're right, of course, I am precisely engaged in crazy talk. That is, unfortunately, what I do, all intuition and absolutely no rigour.

Unlike some of her critics I like AOC a lot, and stickdog is absolutely bang on in his analysis, I agree with him 100%. I certainly disagree with CD and others arguing 'she's a plant.' There's a substantial body of online murmering to the same effect, and about Tulsi (and others) and the one thing I'm fairly certain of is that it's all manufactured by the usual suspects (ref the Bell Pottinger thread, there's a family that's been doing the same thing, literally for centuries) to spread suspicion and distrust. That certainly isn't my intention.

When I go out on a limb from time to time (as I tend to) it's usually beacause a 'hunch' is pushing me hard enough, but it's no more than that, a hunch. I've learned to listen to them over the years as RI'ers can appreciate more than most. However, please don't read my comments on this thread as anything more than the ravings of a mad man. Heaven forbid. (I'd sort of assumed you all took that for granted about me and factored it in.)

My point was simple, AOC is wonderful and very promising, but probably pliable(?) in a way that Tulsi is almost certainly not. That's all.

I'll avoid any futher, erm, contribution on this subject.

My point was simple, AOC is wonderful and very promising, but probably pliable(?) in a way that Tulsi is almost certainly not. That's all.

Boiled down to that, I can see it. Gabbard is a really interesting person because she puts substance into the idea of someone evolving. And it is her journey, not someone steering for her. And she clearly sticks to the principles she has arrived at through this process. And she's still moving along it. AOC is much more a smart, talented anarcho-activist with a plan and what we used to call an affinity group around her. They accomplished something unprecedented in what is still less than a year, and now she's trying to build the enormous coalition necessary for the biggest idea ever introduced in US politics since the New Deal, or abolition. So there is a familiar tension between flexibility to find unavoidable compromise and the pliability it too easily becomes. She has been strong repeatedly and admirably and willing to take risks, but she has failed miserably on the matter of Venezuela, which I do not consider secondary to anything. It's turning into the equivalent or worse of the Iraq war question. All that can be hoped for from her would be a total flip, there's no defending it.

As ever Jack, you have the uncanny ability to explicate my mangled utterings to perfection.

.

Useless add-on to agree with much of the sentiments of the last few posts (elvis's quote of a stickdog comment; JR's distillation, Harvey's clarification, etc.).

For good reason, many of us have come to expect disappointment (and/or manipulation of sentiment) when 'public servants' tout proposals aimed to benefit the majority. It's one of the key reasons a number of us continue to type away in this space.


The cycle can be broken, though.

(will it be broken? That's the open question)

Dang, that Kool Aid must taste really good going down.

Yes, I just died. My cause of death was a dire lack of circumspectful hopelessness that poisonously caused me to champion the dissemination of some of AOC's ideas about how to make the future better.

Unfortunately, I am not currently in a better place.

Karmamatterz » Thu May 16, 2019 9:14 am wrote:Dang, that Kool Aid must taste really good going down.

I'd prefer mine with a twist of bitters but it doesn't taste so good coming back up.

This is criminal. Good for AOC.

Why haven't other politicians spoken out?

Who takes $$$ from Gilead and its officers and board members?

------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/ ... ask-pharma

Published on Thursday, May 16, 2019 by Common Dreams

'Spoiler: Because Australia Has Universal Healthcare': Watch Ocasio-Cortez Ask Pharma CEO Why HIV Drug Costs $8 Overseas But $1,780 in the US

"We the public, we the people, developed this drug, we paid for this drug. There's no reason this should be $2,000 a month. People are dying because of it."

During a House hearing on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked the CEO of one of America's largest pharmaceutical companies a simple but crucial question: Why does a life-saving HIV drug that costs $8 a month in Australia have a $2,000 price tag in the U.S.?

Gilead chief executive Daniel O'Day declined to comment on the low price of Truvada for PrEP in Australia, but said the reason the cost is close to $2,000—"the current list price is $1,780," he said—in the United States is because the drug has "patent protection."

As the Washington Post reported in March, the development of Truvada as a treatment for HIV was "almost fully funded by U.S. taxpayers."
The U.S. government patented the treatment in 2015, according to the Post, but has "opted not to file an infringement suit to enforce" the patent even as Gilead—which argues the government patent is invalid—rakes in billions of dollars in profits from Truvada.

Ocasio-Cortez highlighted these facts during the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Thursday.

"I think it's important that we notice here that we the public, we the people, developed this drug, we paid for this drug, we led and developed all of the grounding patents to create PrEP, and then that patent has been privatized despite the fact that that patent is owned by the public," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We refuse to enforce it."

"There's no reason this should be $2,000 a month," Ocasio-Cortez added. "People are dying because of it. We own the intellectual property for it. People are dying for no reason. For no reason. We developed this drug."

In a tweet following Thursday's hearing, Ocasio Cortez answered her own question on why Truvada's price is $8 in Australia.
"Spoiler: Because Australia has universal healthcare," wrote the New York congresswoman.

The reason the United States hasn't joined the rest of the industrialized world in establishing a universal healthcare system is not individual drug company executives like O'Day, said Ocasio-Cortez.

"I don't blame you. I blame us. I blame this body," Ocasio-Cortez said during the hearing. "Because every single developed country in the world guarantees healthcare as a right except us. Except the United States. Because we can't get it together. Because we don't have the fortitude to kick pharmaceutical lobbyists [out of] our congressional offices."

My google skills may be lame, so no help there, but while one may be shocked by the $8.00 to $1780.00 comparison, my question would be; how much does the Aussie govt. kick in past the $8.00 the consumer pays?

Also, with the little bit I looked it appears that the Aussie price is more like $55.00 a month and our price is modified by several forms of 'assistance'.

It is good to see some press given to the absurd situation where public money developed the medicine that a private company is profiting mightily from.

I frankly doubt that Aussie pols are any less tools of big pharma interests than are American pols.

^^According to this it cost less than $30 to manufacture and distribute a month's supply in 2005:
http://www.treatmentactiongroup.org/tag ... g-problems

The US price is pure greed. See also Epipen: developed by taxpayer money, sold by private interests at insanely jacked up prices. There's countless examples of this kind of thing, but the politicians responsible a) never have to worry about it because they're rich, and b) are paid and bought by big pharma to advance their interests over the public interest.