RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-vaccine-ip-debacle-11620341686?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

We’ve already criticized President Biden’s bewildering decision Wednesday to endorse a patent waiver for Covid vaccines and therapies. But upon more reflection this may be the single worst presidential economic decision since Nixon’s wage-and-price controls.

In one fell swoop he has destroyed tens of billions of dollars in U.S. intellectual property, set a destructive precedent that will reduce pharmaceutical investment, and surrendered America’s advantage in biotech, a key growth industry of the future. Handed an American triumph of innovation and a great soft-power opportunity, Mr. Biden throws it all away.

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India and South Africa have been pushing to suspend patents at the World Trade Organization for months. They claim that waiving IP protections for Covid vaccines and therapies is necessary to expand global access, but their motivation is patently self-interested.

Both are large producers of generic drugs, though they have less expertise and capacity to make complex biologics like mRNA vaccines. They want to force Western pharmaceutical companies to hand over IP free of charge so they can produce and export vaccines and therapies for profit. Their strategy has been to shame Western leaders into surrendering with the help of Democrats in the U.S.

But suspending IP isn’t necessary to expand supply and will impede safe vaccine production. The global vaccine supply is already increasing rapidly thanks to licensing agreements the vaccine makers have made with manufacturers around the world.

Pfizer and BioNTech this week said they aimed to deliver three billion doses this year, up from last summer’s 1.2 billion estimate. Moderna increased its supply forecast for this year to between 800 million and a billion from 600 million. AstraZeneca says it has built a supply network with 25 manufacturing organizations in 15 countries to produce three billion doses this year.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/we-live-in-the-era-of-the-new-conformists_3805525.html?utm_source=partner

In his latest piece, the estimable Victor Davis Hanson asks the rhetorical question “Are Americans Becoming Sovietized?”

Without a doubt. And a key reason behind this, I have been thinking for a long time, is that the left and the semi-left, progressives and liberals, masses of them in our country from the corporate world to the media to the academy to entertainment, are the New Conformists.

Well, not completely new, but conformists beyond doubt. Hardly ever an original thought among them.

They are like the “Triplets” song from Vincente Minelli’s classical musical “The Band Wagon.” (“We do everything alike, we look alike, we dress alike. We walk alike, we talk alike.”)

With this mindset, becoming “Sovietized” scarcely takes an effort. You don’t have to learn a word of Russian beyond “nyet.”

Back in the Fifties, conservatives were accused of being the “organization men” or the “men in the grey flannel suit,” but these days it’s the other way around.

No one is more predictable, more conformist, than the so-called “woke.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/05/06/new-earmarks-costing-taxpayers-10-billion-proposed-by-324-members-of-congress–is-there-wasteful-spending/?sh=275a772c5a93

Pork is back on the table in Congress. Critics say that bringing back earmarks was the equivalent of bringing back Swine Flu.

This week, the U.S. House posted online 3,309 earmarks proposed by 324 members of Congress. The taxpayer cost of these new projects amounted to $9.7 billion.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com mapped each earmark by congressional district. Just click a pin (member district) and scroll down to see the earmarks rendered in the chart beneath the map.

The list was compiled from member websites where they were required to post their appropriation and infrastructure earmarks. There were 220 Democrats and 104 Republicans who embraced the “member directed spending.”

Review the rankings of all 324 members requesting earmarks here. Since 2011, Congress banned earmarks because of systemic corruption. Recently both parties decided to resurrect the practice.

Democrats requested 2,338 earmarks for $4.94 billion. Republicans requested 971 earmarks for $4.7 billion. Six of the top eight members requesting the most earmarks and 14 of the top 25 were Republicans.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.coM

In February 2017, less than a month after he had taken office, Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), in a floor speech, questioned Mr. Trump’s mental health. He was joined by Senator Al Franken (D-MN) and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA). According to an article in The Hill on February 17, 2017, thirty-five psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers signed a letter to the New York Times that stated, “the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions make him incapable of serving safely as president.” The American Psychiatric Association has long held that to render a professional opinion on a public figure one has not examined is unethical. However, that didn’t stop the thirty-five, none of whom had met with Mr. Trump. We now have a new President. While no gaggle of psychiatrists has weighed in on Mr. Biden, one wonders: Are the President’s cognitive abilities declining, as some have suggested? The truth is, we don’t know; but some, including me, are suspicious that age has taken its toll on the man.  

President Biden has been a stutterer since childhood. According to the National Stuttering Association, stuttering is a “neurological disorder that interferes with the production of speech.” It does not indicate a psychological disorder or mental deficiency. It does not suggest dementia, but neither does it preclude it. Dementia is a catch-all word to describe various symptoms of cognitive decline. Early manifestations would include forgetfulness and limits to social skills and reasoning. In 1988, Mr. Biden suffered two brain aneurysms, but there is no reason to believe they would lead to any form of dementia.

Like those eminent psychiatrists and psychologists who passed judgement on President Trump, my opinion regarding President Biden is empirical, not analytical, so accept my words with caution – a warning the Times did not offer. Yet, to publicly question Mr. Biden’s fitness for office is apparently off limits. In 2017, Republicans like Mike Simpson (R-ID) agreed that Mr. Trump exaggerated and made false statements, and that it is always fair to question any President’s judgements. Yet, there is a deafening silence from both sides of the aisle when it comes to questioning the mental well-being of President Biden. Why?

Why do I feel as I do? Mr. Biden spent thirty-six years in the nation’s most deliberative body – the U.S. Senate. He could be mean-spirited, as Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas came to learn, but he could also be a consensus builder. He campaigned as a moderate and unifier, yet he has governed by Executive Order, signing over sixty EOs in his first hundred days as President, more than double what Mr. Trump did and more than triple what Mr. Obama signed in his first hundred days.