With all of the chaos of world events and the holiday season, it’s easy to miss pretty important things, especially if the federal government gets involved. And especially if Puddin’ Head Joe is involved.
After not wanting to take on rising drug prices because we had other things to spend money on, like a war an ocean away where we don’t have a direct interest in either side winning (but only a complete moron would do tha…nevermind), Puddin’ Head Joe is finally addressing it. By trying to exert federal power to address it. More specifically, Puddin’ Head Joe’s clown car…I mean Administration has put together a plan to use something called “march-in rights.”
Well, that doesn’t sound ominous!
Needless to say, I have questions. And statements. Oh, and jokes!
march-in rights
What the Left thinks it means – a measure that will allow the government to control drug prices if federal funds were used to develop the drugs
What it really means – a way for the Left to screw up worse than they already do
The origin of march-in rights was the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. The TL:DR version: this law set up conditions where some entities outside of the public sector could develop inventions they could patent and monetize while receiving federal funds. But there’s a catch, one Leftists have been pushing to use. Under certain circumstances, the government can “march in” and take over, making changes the outside entities may or may not agree with, but have to abide by because…they took federal funding.
Yep. Completely innocuous. Nothing unsavory could happen.
Hell, even someone from Harvard Medical School says there’s nothing to worry about because it’s just the federal government exercising its rights in an agreement. And since it came from Harvard, we know it’s…probably bullshit.
For those of a small government mindset like your humble correspondent, this is the ultimate nose in the tent situation. If you take federal funds to develop a product, that shouldn’t automatically give the government the authority to come in after the fact and screw shit up on a whim. Or as the Puddin’ Head Joe Administration puts it, “extreme, unjustified, and exploitative of a health or safety need.”
Once a government official who may be confused about the number of genders (spoiler alert: still 2) determines this threshold is met, the federal government can swoop in and allow third parties to make the products, in this case drugs, cheaper. On the surface, this doesn’t sound like a bad idea. We all like to save money, especially if we have multiple high-cost prescriptions. So, why do I get the feeling this isn’t going to wind up being as much of a benefit as we’re being told?
Let’s see…Obamacare, the PATRIOT Act, the EPA, the FDA, the USPS, Amtrak, student loans…
For the Leftists out there, these are all things the government has told us would help us, but wind up being really fucking expensive without much actual benefit. But as long as we print the money to keep them rolling, the Left don’t care!
To the Left, money means power, and the most powerful currency in the country is government money. It’s the carrot, the stick, and the whip. It can entice people to act a certain way, as well as to punish wrongthink. And once you take the federal government’s money, you are its bitch until you can find a way out from under its thumb. And, trust me, they won’t make it easy.
Even if the Puddin’ Head Joe Administration figured out how to get its head out of its ass and make march-in rights work with drug costs, there’s going to be a major shift in contract law, especially with federal contracts. If the government decides what you’ve worked on for years runs afoul of what it thinks the fruits of your labor are worth, march-in rights give them the authority to alter whatever agreement you had. And with the criteria as presented being so vague, it could be for any reason it wants, as long as the government can justify it. I don’t know about you, but that’s fucking scary to me.
And it gets worse! Since the government can print money, it doesn’t have to play by the same laws of economics the rest of us do. Government isn’t in the money-making business. If they experience a loss because one of their ideas go tits up, they’ll print more money to cover the loss. And since they’re the only game in town for a lot of things they do, they don’t have an incentive to keep costs low to attract customers. We need what they provide, so they set the prices and the service level and if you don’t like it, fuck you!
There is another aspect to march-in rights that concerns me greatly. If Puddin’ Head Joe is successful here and the courts don’t uphold any challenges to the application, this opens the door for other government-funded projects to be subject to the whims of bureaucrats. You know, like…oh, let me just pull something out of my ass quick…the Internet? A pretty good case could be made that the Internet as we know it came from the Department of Defense, thus it was funded by the government and anyone else who distributes it can expect a knocking at their chamber doors and told what to do going forward or else.
The Corleone family would have killed for this kind of power. Oh, wait…
The point is we can’t let the possibility of lower drug costs blind us to the reality. If you give the government an inch, they’ll take a few thousand miles and then tax you up the ass for it. March-in rights are the governmental equivalent of a Faustian deal: you’ll almost get what you want but not ever get it completely, and you will pay dearly for it.
Like eating Chipotle, only without botulism.
Tag: biden administration
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
Although the Left loves to play with words, there are times when they’re played by words. Such is the case with the hot phrase making its way through the Right, “Let’s Go Brandon.” I haven’t seen Leftists this pissed off about three words since President Donald Trump.
I know I’m a little late to the party on this one, but seeing how the Left keeps getting their panties in a twist over it (and that’s not the only thing twisted here), I figured I might as well delve deeper into the phenomenon.
Let’s Go Brandon
What the Left thinks it means – a derogatory term to protest the Biden Administration
What it really means – a semi-organic phrase originating from an ill-advised attempt to protect the Biden Administration that has taken on a life of its own
In Leftist circles, Joe Biden is a popular President, and only a handful of misguided people think otherwise. In the real world, though, he’s only slightly more popular than sexually-transmitted diseases, a Hannah Gadsby stand-up special, and a nude pictorial by Rosie O’Donnell. And that’s even with a press slobbering over him more than the President does on himself.
While the Left struggles with why people aren’t worshiping the ground he walks on, it’s really not that hard to understand. For being in politics for most of my and his adult lives, it’s clear he hasn’t learned much about how to lead. Oh, he’s had leadership opportunities, but he hasn’t picked up on the simplest of basics.
Namely, don’t be a dumbass.
As a result of the President’s inability to master this, along with the ongoing allegations of voter fraud, people started to push back in small, but noticeable ways. Granted, these weren’t as extreme as knitting pussy hats or overtaking portions of Seattle and turning it into Beirut with Starbucks, but the effect was the same: it pissed people off.
And, hypocritically so, making Leftists clutch their metaphorical pearls because…there was vulgarity! The chant of “Fuck Joe Biden” became the go-to for people who didn’t like the President, and the same Leftists who got behind the “Fuck Trump” chants suddenly became Puritans. Or Im-Puritans as the case may be.
Either way, the point was made. Where the twisting of the phrase came into play was during a live interview with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown. Although it was clear the crowd was yelling “Fuck Joe Biden,” the reporter tried to pass it off as the crowd yelling “Let’s Go Brandon.” That one attempt to poorly explain away what was actually being said spread like wildfire on the Right. Everything from flags to hats to t-shirts, including face masks and a #1 song on iTunes, started popping up and spreading across the country.
Hmmm…apparently that small group of naysayers is a lot bigger than the Left believes.
Although there are a lot of reasons the Left hates “Let’s Go Brandon,” one of the less obvious ones is it didn’t come from the Left. The Left’s stock and trade is creating memorable phrases that resonate with potential voters and the party faithful. And let’s be honest, “Build Back Better” doesn’t exactly inspire passion in anyone but the hardcore Bidenites. To have something like “Let’s Go Brandon” catch on means the Left can’t control the narrative.
Which means they have to destroy it.
Recent articles by NPR, the Associated Press, and others attempt to peel the onion and mention the ill-fated turn of a phrase the Right co-opted, but fail to truly understand how and why it’s taken off. Instead, the Left tries to pass it off as vulgarity in lieu of political discourse. (Yeah, like “Fuck Trump” was the height of brilliant repartee.) And to be fair, that’s an accurate assessment, but it skims the surface without ever getting deeper than a mud puddle. So, let me fill in the blanks.
Joe Biden has made some horrible decisions as President that have negatively impacted people across the country. When this happens, people are going to get upset and look for ways to needle the powerful. That’s the way it’s been here since pre-Revolutionary War days, and it’s going to continue for many years to come.
The ultimate slap in the face, though, is the fact it’s protected speech, just like the Left’s tantrums over the past 5 years is. Even when we don’t like it. If the Left decides to go the legislative or regulatory route to stifle “Let’s Go Brandon,” it will only take until the next Republican President for it to backfire. Granted, no one said the Left was any good at long-term consistent thinking, but it’s still something to consider.
Speaking personally, I’m amused by the chant, if only because it pisses off the Left so much. It’s not something I would normally support because their brevity robs the ideas behind them of their power and intellectual heft, but I wholeheartedly support anyone who wants to use it because, well, I’m not a dick. Then again, sometimes the most impactful messages don’t need to be an intellectual masterpiece.
After all, they still sell Hot Pockets off the jingle alone.
Leftist Lexicon Word of the Week
If you’ve watched the Left as long as I have, first off, I’m sorry. Second, there are some cues when they’re going to try to advance/distort a word, idea, or concept by what phrasing they use.
This past week, the word “competent” has been thrown around like Tom Brady throwing footballs at training camp. The Left and the media (but I repeat myself) have expressed everything from not-so-subtle exhaling to sycophantic gushing over their perception of the Biden Administration as being head and shoulders above the Trump Administration. They seem pleasantly surprised at how the Biden Administration seems to know what it’s doing.
But, as we’ve seen previously, the Left loves to play with the language to make themselves look smarter, faster, and better.
competent
What the Left thinks it means – mature, intelligent, and empathic leadership shown by political leaders
What it really means – a phrase that should rarely, if ever, used to describe any Presidency
Why, yes, my general cynicism about government is coming through! How could you tell?
Seriously, though, competence isn’t normally associated with government as a whole because we’re dealing with human beings in power. The chance we’re going to get a savant in a Cabinet role is less likely than Donald Trump marrying Rosie O’Donnell. Even when we get someone reasonably intelligent in a role (see Dr. Ben Carson), the fit might not be there, which will result in a litany of mistakes.
Now, imagine that same work being done by stereotypical WalMart shoppers. That’s closer to how competent government is these days. Frightening, isn’t it? Add to that the immense number of regulations, policies, procedures, legalese, and general ideologically-driven goals, and you have a situation where even the best of intentions gets turned into the worst of bureaucracies.
In spite of the media’s best attempts to prop up Joe Biden as a good President, most people just aren’t buying it. The policy wonks, like your humble correspondent, see an Administration tackling problems like Pee Wee Herman while making somewhat manageable problems worse. And a lot of these are unforced errors, meaning they could have been prevented if someone had just taken the President aside and said, “I know what you want to do here, but it’s like letting Hunter have Charlie Sheen as his rehab partner.”
Take the border crisis, for example. Before he came into office, Joe Biden laid out a pretty clear invitation for illegal immigrants from Mexico to come on in! Then, when people took him up on his offer, the Administration was caught off-guard. I mean, how were they to know an open invitation to come here would be accepted so readily? It’s not like the President was in office for nearly half a century or anything, right?
One of the legitimate knocks against the Trump Administration was the lack of experience in important roles within the government. It seemed like President Trump handed out these roles like Planned Parenthood hands out…well, whatever it is they hand out. Now, with a new Administration, we see…exactly the same problems as the Trump Administration, but with a lot more tolerance from the Left. Seriously, who was the genius to made Pete Buttigieg Secretary of Transportation because he likes trains? I liked trains when I was 7 or 8, but I don’t put that on my resume so someone in a future Administration would put me on a short list for the Department of Transportation, or any Cabinet post for that matter. Given the nozzleheads in charge, I’m surprised Hunter Biden wasn’t put in charge of the DEA.
It’s because of the unforced errors that the Left is talking about competence with regards to the Biden Administration. The idea is to persuade you with multitude (i.e. an appeal to popularity) than to get you to think whether the Administration fits the definition. As you might have guessed, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, if only because Obama Administration failures…I mean holdovers like Anita Dunn, John Kerry, and Jen Psaki managed to find work again after screwing up so badly.
But at least there aren’t any mean Tweets, right?
Even if you set the lowest possible bar for competence, government finds a way to limbo under it with room to spare because there is no punishment for failure. If anything, people tend to fail upward. Want proof? Who is President and Vice President right now? A two-time Presidential candidate whose mental faculties are on the decline and a Presidential candidate who dropped out before the Iowa Caucuses due to a lack of support. And people expect competence out of these two?
I mean, aside from Leftists.
I have a saying that applies in this situation: “If you have to say it, you ain’t it.” If the Biden Administration or its stenographers in the media have to keep telling us the Administration is competent, it’s a clear sign it’s not (oh, and that the media are hacks). But don’t just take my word for it. Watch the Administration carefully and see if they perform at even basic levels of competency. Or you can do the DMV Test. If your local DMV works more efficiently and effectively than the federal government, there’s a problem, and Spoiler Alert it’s not a local one.
I know the Left wants to create a clear difference between the Trump Administration and the Biden Administration, but you can’t just slap a descriptor on the latter and call it a day. Government by its very nature doesn’t solve problems and expecting people who have spent a good chunk of their lives proving it and/or covering up for it to suddenly get it stretches reality like Mr. Fantastic, only less believable. When the Biden Administration does something right, I will be among the first to call it out because I’m good like that. Given what I’ve seen so far, though, I may be waiting a while. Good thing I packed a lunch!