Tag Archives: Regulatory capture

Putting Big Bad Pharma Back on Trial in the COVID-19 Era, by Rebecca Strong

One of the best and most comprehensive stories I’ve soon on how big Pharma rigs the game in favor of itself. From Rebecca Strong at medium.com:

Photo credit: Massimo Giachetti

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FDA Duplicity on Covid-19 Vaccines, by Steve McCann

Nothing is more corrupt than a completely captured government agency. From Steve McCann at americanthinker.com:

Perhaps the most important long-term fallout of the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic has been the exposure of the venality and politicization within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as well as other federal health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Nothing personifies this corruption more than the FDA’s absurdly close ties to the pharmaceutical companies.  Thus, their refusal to recognize proven inexpensive therapeutics and their unorthodox approach in licensing certain Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 — vaccines that are not offered for sale in the United States.

What was the FDA’s and the pharmaceutical companies’ endgame in this process?  Was it to gaslight the American people in order to sell vaccines and achieve mass vaccinations?   Was their motive to protect the pharmaceutical companies from exposure to liability and a tsunami of litigation?  Was it so the FDA could more easily approve these vaccines for children who are not at risk of Covid-19?  Or all the above?

In August of 2021, the FDA, to great media fanfare, granted permanent approval for a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine.  The catch: it was for a vaccine that was not available to Americans.  What the FDA approved and licensed is Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine, not the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that has been continuously in use under Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) since December of 2020.  Manufacturers of medicines sold under an EUA are immunized from legal liability.

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A critique of modern socialism, by Alasdair Macleod

The welfare-warfare-regulatory-state model of socialism is the next model that will collapse. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

ocialism has moved on from the Marxist version of the state owning the means of production to one whereby production remains in the hands of individuals but are heavily regulated — echoing Mussolini’s fascist-socialist model.

But after nearly nine decades this model faces collapse, much like the Soviet collapse after sixty-seven years. This article explores the modern socialist model, updates the economic calculation problem identified by von Mises in 1920 and explains why it still fails in today’s socialism. And finally we predict the consequences for governments and their state-issued currencies.

Introduction

It is presidential election year in the United States. The choice is between the Republican’s or the Democrat’s socialism, the former being a milder version of the latter. A further difference is President Trump’s administration increasingly pays the government’s bills by socialising money, while great-uncle Joe wants to tax the rich even more (which in practice means not the rich but the middle and lower classes) as well as defoliating  the magic money tree.

In Britain, those of us who rejoiced at a free marketeer becoming Prime Minister with a strong electoral mandate have experienced a greater clampdown on personal freedom than imposed by any British government since post-war rationing. Admittedly, Covid-19 and its lockdowns were not foreseen, but will the British ever regain any of their hitherto restricted freedoms? And those of us with long memories are reflecting that the imposition of taxes — the socialising of our earnings — under the Conservatives is almost always more onerous than under Labour. It was not meant to be like that.

One way or the other, the establishment’s socialisation of our wealth, money and freedom “creeps in this petty pace day to day until the last syllable of recorded time”. Whether we like it or not, we are all socialists now. It is a fact of our lives, if not our inclinations. The destruction of our money and what wealth we have left is claimed to be for the common good, as opposed to capitalism, which the socialists tell us enriches the few and is deeply immoral. They, the socialists, have captured the moral high ground, leading us to their higher plain. They allege it is progress towards a better humanity. Their utopian view sees the end of social inequality as its final goal, and as Man progresses towards it the human race will discard capitalism and the class wars that go with it.

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America’s “Medical Deep State”. The Role of the CDC, by Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null

The medical deep state is just as corrupt and unchallengeable as the military-industrial-intelligence one. From Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null at lewrockwell.com:

For over two decades, American families have faced an unscrupulous foe that threatens the public health and welfare. It is a rogue, unmanageable institution within our federal government, now seemingly beholden solely to private interests. Citizens have been horribly mistaken in believing that the nation’s leading health agency, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), honors its mandate to protect the public from “dangerous health threats,” both domestic and foreign. We are expected to assume the CDC relies upon the most advanced and cutting-edge medical science and data to make its policy decisions. However, the agency’s history of corruption and fraud contradict its own pledge, as outlined on its website. Instead of protecting the “health security of our nation,” the CDC uses bromides and meaningless pageantry to hide its true nature.

During the past year, especially in recent months, the fear-mongering spewing forth from the CDC has become virulent. It is a classic Orwellian script. The recent measles outbreak – although nowhere near as alarming as the flare-ups of bygone eras – has been seized upon as an opportunity to brainwash the public and reshape it into obedient livestock in order to increase vaccination compliance. Worse, this disinformation campaign ignores everything we know about measles infection and the failures of the MMR vaccine.

Unfortunately, we are no longer permitted to debate the pros and cons of the measles vaccine. The CDC consistently shuts down debate when its decisions are challenged.  Physicians, medical researchers, immunologists and former vaccine advocates who challenge the loose claims for vaccine safety and efficacy are frustrated and eager to publicly debate the best vaccine advocates the CDC and vaccine industry have to offer, but none will take up the challenge because the science is so clearly not on their side.

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Ten Reasons Why Governments Fail, by Anthony P. Mueller

Why governments don’t work. From Anthony P. Mueller at mises.org:

When politicians and bureaucrats fail to deliver what they promise — which happens a lot — we’re often told that the problem can be solved if only we get the right people to run the government instead. We’re told that the old crop of government agents were trying hard enough. Or that they didn’t have the right intentions. While it’s true that there are plenty of incompetent and ill-intentioned people in government, we can’t always blame the people involved. Often, the likelihood of failure is simply built in to the institution of government itself. In other words, politicians and bureaucrats don’t succeed because they can’tsucceed. The very nature of government administration is weighted against success.

Here are ten reasons why:

I. Knowledge

Government policies suffer from the pretense of knowledge . In order to perform a successful market intervention, politicians need to know more than they can. Market knowledge is not centralized, systematic, organized and general, but dispersed, heterogeneous, specific, and individual. Different from a market economy where there are many operators and a constant process of trial and error, the correction of government errors is limited because the government is a monopoly. For the politician, to admit an error is often worse than sticking with a wrong decision – even against own insight.

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