:: Bee Blogger ::

:: Monday, March 22, 2004 ::

Passion Critics Smear Catholics

A lot of people hoped that they could intimidate Christians into staying away from viewing "The Passion of The Christ" by using smear tactics. Christians, and especially Catholics, were universally labelled anti-Semitic. It was said that Kristallnacht Revisited would erupt - the second coming of the Anti-Christ - another Inquisition. Guilt by associated was supposed to have embarrased Christians into staying away.

Of course nothing of the sort happened. Contrary to anti-Catholic bigots' predictions, anti-semitism went down, not up. Contrary to the critics' complaint that Christ's message was left out of the movie - it was communicated very well, judging from the results. And the box office receipts must be a severe disappointment to those who had hoped desperately to stop any artistic production that portrayed Christ in a reverential or respectful way.

Mel Gibson stood up to the Hollywood establishment and put everything on the line to refute the idea that Christians can be intimidated or embarrased into betraying their principles. Hollywood's rules are being challenged and redefined, and America will benefit from it.

:: doctorfixit 3:26 PM [+] ::
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Drug Importation Argument Reveals Economic Ignorance

Americans' ignorance of the most basic principles of economics makes them vulnerable to Democrat party demogoguery and results in horrible public policies that endure for decades even after the underlying stupidity is revealed.

Thus, even as we are now coming to grips with the collapse of the Social Security pyramid, a new policy emerges as a result of cascading international economic idiocy: "re-importation" of drugs. Let's look at this next pyramid of stupidity.

At the base of the pyramid is Canada's socialist health system. The socialist cure for high prices is to make them illegal. Price controls make economic sense - to people with the economic maturity of five year olds. If it's too expensive, just make it less expensive, like two kindergarteners playing "store-man".

On the next level of stupidity and corruption, the drug companies, not wanting to miss out on billions in sales, simply raised the price on drugs sold in America to make up for Canadian socialism. Americans pay extra to cover prescriptions sold in Canada, just like Americans pay extra on their hospital bills to cover the cost of illegal aliens using American emergency rooms.

Drug purchasers in America have discovered they can get the same deal as the Canadians they are subsidizing, by pretending to be Canadian. The Canadians don't seem to mind - yet. (Americans will soon discover that they can also save a lot of money on health care by pretending to be illegal aliens and going to the emergency room. For proof of non-citizenship they can even use a spare driver's license obtained by claiming to be an illegal.)

When enough Americans discover that they can avoid paying surcharges by pretending to be Canadian or Mexican, the drug companies will have to do something. They can either

1. take increasing losses on discounted Canadian drugs
2. keep increasing the price paid by the remaining suckers to make up the difference, or
3. remove the price controls and eliminate the surcharge paid by Americans, resulting in fair market price for everyone.

The most probable result is that which comes from the the highest level of economic ignorance. Drug companies aren't ignorant - they won't take a loss, and they won't remove the price controls because the Canadians (and the Americans pretending to be Canadian) won't let them. That leaves choice 2.

Choice 2 coincides neatly with the newest layer on the pyramid - the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Republicans have volunteered future generations of American taxpayers to be the new suckers to pay the difference in cost that allows Canadians to sell price-controlled drugs at a discount. And, because the American government is now buying the drugs, there will be no limit to price increases. Instead of penny-pinching Grandma, we have Uncle Sam the spendthrift doing the buying. The Medicare prescription drug law guarantees that Uncle Sam will NOT try to negotiate better deals on prices. And as we have seen with Medicare, college tuition, and other programs, the minute the government becomes the buyer, prices go into a self-sustained nuclear reaction.

The Canadian socialists win. The Americans pretending to be Canadian win. The politicians win. The drug companies win - big. Unborn Americans lose more than they will ever know, if they can be kept even more ignorant of economics than their grandparents were. Don't expect our government schools to do anything to make them less ignorant. Do expect government schools to constantly reinforce the idea that the unfortunate consequences of economic ignorance are entirely due to 'evil white men'. The irony is that, in the case of Medicare prescription drugs, the demogogues will be largely correct.

:: doctorfixit 11:42 AM [+] ::
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Voters Kill "Blank Check" Proposition - Bee Buries the Story

Liberals had their heads handed to them by the voters Tuesday, but you had to search hard to find any mention of it in the Sacramento Bee, whose editors buried the biggest story of this election on the last page. They then put another liberal spin on the story with a mind-boggling attempt to connect the 2-1 defeat of 56 to the Governor's success on Props 57 & 58. The Bee says voters "followed the Governor's lead" on 57 and 58 to defeat 56. There is no connection. Schwarzenegger never talked about Prop 56 - he stayed conspicuously absent from any discussion - wisely concentrating his attention on his two propositions.

Voters were able to discriminate between Schwarzenegger's reasonable attempt to cope with the democrat disaster he was handed, and Prop 56, a cleverly concealed attempt to eviscerate Prop 13.

Wouldn't it be great if the liberals drained their bank dry by putting up one or two of these losers each election cycle?

:: doctorfixit 7:53 AM [+] ::
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