Bits: COVID vaccine price gouge, etc.

From the ruthless capitalism files: Here it comes again. Unregulated markets running free, wild and butt naked are about to screw us royally. Again. Ars Technica writes:

Moderna CEO: 400% price hike on COVID vaccine 

“consistent with the value”

Lawmakers have already called Pfizer's similar plan “pure and deadly greed”

Moderna is considering raising the price of its COVID-19 vaccine by over 400 percent—from $26 per dose to between $110 and $130 per dose—according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.  

The plan, if realized, would match the previously announced price hike for Pfizer-BioNTech's rival COVID-19 vaccine.  

Until now, the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech have been purchased by the government and offered to Americans for free. In the latest federal contract from July, Moderna's updated booster shot cost the government $26 per dose, up from $15–$16 per dose in earlier supply contracts, the Journal notes. Similarly, the government paid a little over $30 per dose for Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine this past summer, up from $19.50 per dose in contracts from 2020.

Note the standard capitalist moral justification here, “consistent with the value.” Nothing is said about cost to make and distribute the vaccine, whose price has already increased once by ~70% for Moderna and ~55% for Pfizer. Even worse, US taxpayers spent at least $1 billion to de-risk the development of Moderna’s COVID vaccine. Now the capitalists return the favor by blowing us all a “consistent with the value” raspberry and jacks the price up again, this time about 4-fold (400%).

We all know how this will play out in congress. Democrats will complain and try too do something, Republicans will block it, claiming they are fighting against socialist tyranny (to most Republicans there is no such thing as price gouging) and us taxpayers will get price gouged as usual. Unregulated capitalism and health care just do not mix.

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The radicalized Republican Party: A WaPo opinion piece continues a wave of analysis what appears to reflect an awakening by some of the mainstream media that the GOP is a radicalized, anti-democratic political power. Jennifer Rubin opines:

There are no moderate House Republicans

Listen to the mainstream media’s coverage of House Republicans, and you might think there is a mass of “normal” Republicans who do not buy into election denial, who are not apologists for former president Donald Trump, and who understand that the party’s crazy talk and election conspiracy theories contributed to its historic underperformance in the 2022 midterms.

The mystery: Where are these people hiding?

Prime suspects would be the 18 Republicans from districts that Joe Biden won in 2020, such as Reps. David Schweikert (Ariz.), Don Bacon (Neb.) and Thomas H. Kean (N.J.). Yet every single one of them voted 15 times to make Kevin McCarthy, an election denier, the speaker of the House.

Every single one of them also voted for the rules package that the House passed this week, which sets up a standoff over the debt limit, creates a committee to “investigate” ongoing criminal cases and hobbles the Office of Congressional Ethics. Nor did they didn’t bat an eye over reports that McCarthy (Calif.) promised to give more seats on the Rules Committee to MAGA radicals. Pretty immoderate behavior.  

Rarely if ever do the media grill these (im)moderate members on their enabling of the far right. Frankly, reporters do a disservice to the voters by characterizing them as somehow more sensible than the Freedom Caucus crazies. With the House as closely divided as it is, it would take only a few of them to defeat radical measures. Yet time and again, they cave.

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Opinion poll on the Supreme Court: A Gallup poll from last august indicates that most Americans believe the court is partisan political. However, the difference in perceptions by Democrats (13% approve) and Republicans (74% approve) is big.

The Hill comments: “Two-thirds of the public support term limits. But Republicans have little incentive to back legislation that, from their perspective, solves a nonexistent problem.”

Since rank and file Republicans like what they see in the current Supreme Court, does that make them as a group authoritarian or fascist, even if most are partly or mostly unaware of what the Christofascist court they approve of is doing?

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Egads!! The debt ceiling problem is upon us right now!: The Ap writes:

The federal government is on track to max out on its $31.4 trillion borrowing authority as soon as this month, starting the clock on an expected standoff between President Joe Biden and the new House Republican majority that will test both parties’ ability to navigate a divided Washington, with the fragile global economy at stake.

Once the government bumps up against the cap — it could happen any time in the next few weeks or longer — the Treasury Department will be unable to issue new debt without congressional action. The department plans to deploy what are known as “extraordinary measures” to keep the government operating. But once those measures run out, probably mid-summer, the government could be at risk of defaulting unless lawmakers and the president agree to lift the limit on the U.S. government’s ability to borrow.

I didn’t realize this nasty issue was coming alive so soon. Let the bickering, slandering and posturing commence. Unleash the Jim (Jordan), the Marjorie (MTG), the Matt (Gaetz) and the Kevin (McCarthy)!!!

The blue-eyed Kevin holding the chains just before he 

unleashes the Jim, Marjorie and Matt hounds

upon us all

We’re in real trouble now ☹️

New House Republican majority prepare for debt limit fight that could cause chaos and recession

The US economy already is on a knife edge, with fears of a looming recession amid a historic effort to tame decades-high inflation.

Now, members of the new House Republican majority have amped up the uncertainty by saying they won’t let the federal government keep borrowing money this year without an agreement to significantly cut spending. A standoff over increasing the $31.4 trillion debt limit when it’s reached later this year could roil financial markets, trigger higher borrowing costs, and push the economy into a recession it might otherwise have avoided, experts said.

The economic fallout would be even worse if, unlike in previous showdowns, Congress doesn’t ultimately raise the limit in time to avoid a first-ever US government default on its bills. The difficulty that the narrow House Republican majority had in electing Kevin McCarthy as speaker last week has amplified the concerns.

“I think the the economy’s going to struggle this year, but we have a fighting chance to avoid a downturn, assuming we don’t make a big mistake, like breaching the debt limit or even threatening to breach the debt limit,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, an economics research and consulting firm. “The dysfunction in Washington is a very, very serious threat to the economy and our ability to avoid a recession in 2023.”

One of the concessions McCarthy made to win the speaker’s gavel was to use the need to raise the debt limit to force Democrats to agree to federal spending cuts. House Republicans have loudly complained about the rising national debt under President Biden, although they were largely silent as it shot up during the Trump administration.

The table is already being set for a high-stakes clash.

“I’ve never voted for a debt ceiling increase, and I won’t unless it’s paired with meaningful reform,” Representative Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican, said last week. Former president Donald Trump egged on Republicans this week, writing on Truth Social that they should be “playing tough in the upcoming debt ceiling negotiations.”

 

That’s got Democrats worried. While there is bipartisan agreement that the rising debt needs to be addressed, the White House has said Biden won’t negotiate over raising the debt limit, which is required to pay for spending already authorized by Congress.

“There will be no hostage-taking,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week. “The full faith and credit of our country is too important to allow any of that, because to default would be to force extraordinary costs on the American economy and American families.”

Biden knows the damage a debt limit standoff can cause. He was vice president in 2011 when House Republicans under speaker John Boehner, fresh off winning control of the chamber after four years in the minority, balked at increasing the limit until the last minute during the Obama administration.

“It was terrifying, and the terror came from not being sure that Speaker Boehner had the ability to control his caucus,” said Harvard economist Jason Furman, who was a top White House economic official at the time. “The debt limit is just an existential threat to the US economy.”

Boehner had about a 50-seat majority in the House. McCarthy has only a four-seat majority, giving him much less flexibility to make a debt limit deal with Biden and the Democrats.

Fr. Boston Globe 1/11: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/11/nation/debt-limit-fight-could-cause-financial-chaos-push-economy-into-recession-experts-warn/?et_rid=1312764944&s_campaign=todayinpolitics:newsletter

Linesperson?

 Are you friggin' kidding me?

So, I was watching a junior hockey game the other night and they were presenting an award to the Linesmen - of which there were two, BOTH MEN, but announce them as Linespersons. 

LINESPERSONS!! When the only two linespersons on the ice were MEN.

Now there is another junior hockey tournament going on between young ladies, and the commentators are always referring to them as "young ladies" and "girls" and on occasion "women". WHY NOT PERSONS?

This is SO politically incorrect to call them by female names when they SHOULD BE called Persons, amirite??

Bad enough postmen are now postal workers and firemen are now fire fighters.

Instead of this… Consider this…

1 Anchorman Anchor

2 Assemblyman Assemblyperson

3 Businessman Businessperson

4 Cameraman Camera Operator

5 Chairman Chair, Chairperson

6 Clergyman Minister, Pastor

7 Congressman Member of Congress

8 Construction Man Construction Worker

9 Councilman Council Member

10 Craftsman Artisan

11 Crewman Crew Member

12 Doorman Door Keeper, Door Attendant

13 Fireman Firefighter

14 Foreman Supervisor, Supervisor, Boss

15 Garbage Man Trash Collector

16 Handyman Maintenance Person, Fixer

17 Longshoreman Stevedore

18 Mailman Postal Worker, Letter/Mail Carrier

19 Maintenance Man Janitor, Caretaker

20 Patrolman Police Officer

21 Pizza Man Pizza Person

22 Policeman Police Officer

23 Salesman Salesperson

24 Stuntman Stuntperson

25 Weatherman Meteorolgist

https://blog.ongig.com/diversity-and-inclusion/gender-neutral-job-titles/

I have a question: WHEN are they going to stop neutering us men?

An analysis of the state of the House GOP

The open question here is to what extent is the anti-democratic radicalism of House Republicans shared by those in the Senate. I suspect it is shared to a large extent. After all, Senate Republicans are the ones who put Christofascism in charge of the Supreme Court. An analysis published by Salon comments:

The battle over the Speakership dreams of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was a cataclysmic event, in terms of the media's increasingly ineffective efforts to convey to news consumers what is actually going on. Most press coverage portrayed the struggle as one between a more moderate faction supporting McCarthy and a far-right splinter group who opposed him. In reality, however, the fight was merely showboating from a small group of trolls who wanted attention, with no real substance to any of the disagreements. Indeed, pro- and anti-McCarthy groups are in fierce agreement on nearly all major policy issues, including the question of whether democracy is a good thing worth protecting. (Both sides believe it is not!)

For proof there's no real daylight between the two factions, look no further than the fact that the biggest Republican troll in the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, was on Kev's side from the get-go. Greene has become one of the most famous — and powerful — Republicans in Capitol Hill by sheer dint of her gleefully unapologetic fascism. She's one of the biggest apologists for Donald Trump's Big Lie and the violent insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow democracy on January 6, 2021. She's a grade-A conspiracy theorist who rode into Washington spouting QAnon nonsense. Once in office, she went straight for the third rail in American politics, showy antisemitism, downplaying the Holocaust and raving about how Jews were setting wildfires with space lasers. She hits all the major stations of the conspiracy theory cross, from dismissing mass shootings as "false flags" to vaccine denialism to, naturally, 9/11 trutherism. She, of course, has also gotten that sweet, sweet attention by calling for the execution of her political opponents. 

But she's all for McCarthy, because he is fine with all this, despite his media image of moderation. Greene, who is a much savvier operator than the liberals constantly dunking on her would like to admit, clearly realizes that being on the always-Kevin side of this fight opened up a golden opportunity: She can now rebrand herself as a mainstream Republican. With her shiny new committee assignments — complete with access to some of the most highly classified information in government — and her role as McCarthy's golden girl, Greene is set to remake herself into a respected figure on Capitol Hill. She'll be just as much a conspiracy theory kook as she ever was, but her new status as an elder statesman in the GOP will put an ennobling gloss on her lies, helping push them through the ever-credulous Beltway press. 

That Greene is consciously rebranding herself became undeniable on Sunday, when she distanced herself from QAnon during a Fox News interview.

"Well, like a lot of people today, I had easily gotten sucked into some things I'd seen on the internet," she said when host Howard Kurtz asked her about QAnon. "But that was dealt with quickly early on. I never campaigned on those things. That was not something I believed in."

I strongly agree with these two points:

• There is not much difference between the holdout extremists and the other Republicans in the House. The GOP has undeniably radicalized into a corrupted, mendacious anti-democracy political force.

• The mainstream media is doing a poor job of explaining what is going on. One can reasonably speculate that the main reasons are some combination of (i) pro-corporate bias due to corporate ownership, (ii) incompetence and too many errors of omission and commission, (iii) much more pressure to sensationalize and trivialize news to make money than to inform the public, and/or (iv) loss of public trust after decades of unfounded attacks, lies and slanders.

Also, Greene is a shameless liar. She knew all along that QAnon was lies, slanders and crackpottery. She was never sucked in, despite her claim to the contrary. She just needed the publicity. The mainstream media gave it to her.