In 2008, the year this study was published, RAND was funded by Pharma lobbying group National Pharmaceutical Council, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline and Johnson & Johnson. I'm genuinely curious if you think it was possible for RAND to come up with any other conclusion.
are we supposed to believe that the RAND corporation––a decades old workshop for US empire and industry––is going to review the data and conclude price controls on drugs is wise and prudent? I have no idea how people can be credulous.
any time activist groups or left govts threaten Pharma's bottom line, Pharma and their well funded propaganda organ think tanks cry "it will stifle innovation!!" make no mistake what they're doing is threatening capital strike, they are not worried about a loss of "innovation"
these are mob cartel threats, its important they be viewed this way
Why do people think theyre clever pointing out longterm radical projects are presently unpopular. At the time of his killing MLK had a 75% disapproval rating, including ~50% among AA’s. In 1859 the NYT condemned militant abolitionists & called John Brown “a wild & absurd freak”
For yrs polls showed a majority of black South Africans opposed sanctions on South Africa. By the mid 80s this flipped and a majority supported them. But for over a decade the movement to sanction SA wasn’t supported by most black South Africans. Then they had their minds changed
In the early 1960s lunch counter sit-ins were widely loathed and JFK sent his brother to scold civil rights activists for making democrats look bad and instigating southern whites and, you guessed it, costing them votes
From the astute school of political analysis that brought you “poll taxes are just about govt revenue”, “the southern strategy is really about states rights”, and “the Tea Party was just worried about high taxes” comes “CRT is just about being aspirational and postracial”
Man, that semester of journalism school where they teach reporters to have the most generous, literal-minded and ahistoric reading of obviously bullshit right wing dog whistles needs to be abolished & replaced w/ literally anything else, 12 hrs a week of staring at an empty wall
I often wonder, when people like Nate go over to their friend’s house and they open their fridge & their friend says “have whatever you like” if they grab the ice cube trays & walk out because they are apparently pathologically incapable of grasping that words have social context
hi it's me again, "two ideas can exist in my head at once" man. The democratic establishment offers boring corporate suit candidates captured by big donors, routinely blocking material benefits to the working class AND CRT is a well-funded racist moral panic. both are happening
Look, a certain brand of rich liberal consultant will always blame racism for why their shitty candidates lose, as if it's a fixed and insuperable law of nature. This is a convenient way to never change. But this doesn't mean racist appeals aren't a primary driver of GOP turnout
That the Republican Party runs minorities who affirm these racist panics does not make them any less racist than Democrats putting minority faces on their policies of violent border enforcement and Tough on Crime policies. These aren't original tactics.
Amazing how the Pentagon gets hundreds of these puffy write ups in supposedly sophisticated, climate-serious media but not once do they ever get asked or criticized for being one of the largest single carbon emitters on earth. It’s just mindless PR. npr.org/2021/10/26/104…
Again the DOD talks about climate change the way elites at Davos talk about “inequality”—in scare quotes. It is not something to be solved or even mitigated, it is to be managed and used to shore up existing power structures. In this case: another avenue to bloat defense budgets
When DOD reps chat up liberal media on climate—“see, even the pentagon takes climate change seriously!”—its essential to understand that the two groups are largely talking past each other. The DOD has shown basically no interest in reducing its emissions beyond token greenwashing
The addition of “liberal” after corporate here is telling. Corporate media is doing just fine, because Fox News is corporate media & is doing great! The common denominator here is “liberal”, not “corporate”—the addition of which is to simply give the critique faux-left trappings
CNN and MSNBCs audience “disappearing” could, in theory, be good but when it’s resulting in people seeking out mean, nasty and racist right wing media—Fox News, Newsmax, or right wingers on YouTube this is not cause for celebration.
Owning the libs is not an ideology and it’s not, of course, a subversive or edgy position. Hating on MNSBC is one my favorite shticks, I’ve done 3 pod episodes on it, countless articles, but I would never, EVER divorce them from Fox News when making critiques of “corporate media”