What a difference a few years can make. In July of 2005, cable TV’s crusaders wanted that frail stick figure, Michael Jackson, locked away forever. Jackson was a danger to ‘our’ children, they insisted. Had not his accuser said so? The ‘kid’ in question was a five-foot-seven, hirsute, habitual liar and shoplifter, who was following in the tradition of a family of transients and tramps.
Today, the same characters on the networks are having a whale of a time at the prospect of jail time for Dr. Conrad Murray. Murray was convicted of the involuntary manslaughter of Mr. Jackson. The pop sensation died of a fatal dose of the anesthetic propofol. It had been administered in the singer’s bedroom on June 25, 2009.
Dr. Murray, who had been out on bail, was promptly declared a dangerous offender by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor. ‘This is a crime where the end result was the death of a human being. That factor demands rather dramatically that the public should be protected,’ said Pastor.
What a difference a day makes. Before the verdict, Murray was out and about among the public, during which time he did not put anyone under.
Jackson, whom I defended when the prosecutor known as ‘Mad Dog’ (Thomas) Sneddon picked up the star’s scent and gave chase, charging him with child sexual abuse—was a deeply disturbed, body dysmorphic, drug-addicted man. Nevertheless, he was an adult, not a child. His decisions were his to make. And Michael Jackson had hired Murray to feed narcotics directly into his bloodstream. …
With a steady stream of ‘milk of amnesia,’ Mr. Jackson should have expected an unsteady practitioner. …”
Barnes and Nobleis always well-stocked and ships within 24 hours.
Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot fromThe Publisher. Inquire about an Xmas special on bulk buys.
UPDATE (Nov. 11): Robert, there’s the reason I do not watch any show where a 100 pound woman with implants and cleavage bests all men in some of the traditionally toughest male roles there are. I advise men against watching these shows, and taking firm control of the remote. It goes without saying, I lost your thread, but, no need to xplain. [Grin.] Oh, good, manly programs: The Unit, Flashpoint, and Special Ops training on the Military channel. These give you an indication of what’s really involved in a manly work, and why we should not emasculate men.
In a free market, consumers direct supply and demand. And in a free market, increased demand leads to increased supply, as producers compete with one another to meet the demand.
Remedying? Really? At least one of Mr. Obama’s regulatory sleights of hand will increase the scarcity it seeks to remedy: hounding drug sellers for “charging exorbitant prices for scarce medicines.” High prices for scarce goods are what help to harmonize supply and demand.
The shortfall of supply has obviously followed a sudden urgent demand for these drug. Large demand and short supply would initially send the prices of these drugs rocketing. Profits in an unhampered pharmaceutical market would signal to the many drug makers that it’s time to enter into production.
Mr. Obama, however, has taken further action to shortcircuit the street signs of the market—profits.
When there is a shortage of a good in a highly regulated market such as ours, it is safe to say that it is a result of government incursion into the economy. Somethings gets between the market and the consumer—in the case of these drugs, the culprits are Food and Drug Administration regulations and the patent system, which gives a drug company a lengthy monopoly over manufacturing.
When there is a shortage of a good, it is safe to say that it is a result of government incursion into the economy. And there are reported “shortages—“severe” shortages—in “drugs for chemotherapy, infections and other serious ailments.” The shortages, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch, are “endangering patients and forcing hospitals to buy life-saving medications from secondary suppliers at huge markups because they can’t get them any other way.”
How would consumer demand have been heeded in an unhampered market?
The urgent demand for a drug would have been followed by a shortfall of supply. Large demand and short supply would initially send the price of the drugs rocketing. Profits in an unhampered pharmaceutical market would signal to the many drug makers that it’s pedal to the metal: time to enter into accelerated production of this scarce commodity.
Walter Olson of CATO provides more details about “the federal government’s widely publicized crackdown in recent years on pharmaceutical manufacturing and quality-control practices” to have played a role in current shortages.
For real, clear economics, it’s hard to beat financier Peter Schiff. Here is some of the text of his testimony to the gathering of crooks known as Congress. Pearls before swine, if you ask me:
“We stimulated our way into this problem [“the housing bubble and the financial crisis of 2008”]. We are not going to stimulate our way out. In fact the stimulus is actually a sedative. The stimulus is preventing the free market from unraveling the problems of years of bad monetary and fiscal policy have created. We don’t need more spending. We need the opposite of spending. We need under consumption, what the economy lacks is savings, investment, production and if we try to preserve the jobs of the bubble economy with more reckless money printing and borrowing and government spending all we are going to succeed in doing is preventing the restructuring that we need and preventing more productive jobs from coming into existence.”
“And I wanna talk specifically about jobs, I’m an employer, I employ about 150 people. I would probably employ a 1000 more if it were not for government regulations that inhibited my ability to hire and grow my business and forced me to move portions of my business overseas in order to escape the regulatory burden here. But the question is why do I hire people where are these jobs coming from, you know, jobs in a free market, ah, they come from two things, they come from profits, or the profit motive or they come from capital. You need both to create jobs. And in a free market there’s gonna be jobs and if they’re aren’t enough jobs, Congress has to ask: ‘What are we doing to inhibit this process? How are we preventing jobs that would normally be here from coming into existence?'”
“Now, in order for me to hire somebody, I have to be able to make a profit. That means that the person I hire has to deliver to me more value than the cost of the employing them. And the cost of employing them is not just the wages I’m paying them but it’s all the mandatory benefits, the taxes, and more importantly the legal liability that I incur when I hire somebody. Source: LYBIO.net In fact, one of the riskiest things you can do in America is to hire somebody. And because of that reason, because of all the liability from Government, from lawsuits, that you have put on employers, most small businesses their main concern is how not to hire people. How can I grow my business and hire as few people as possible. That is not something that happens in the market. That is something that happens as a consequence of Government…”
“…Demand doesn’t come form government spending; inflation comes from government spending. Demand comes from supply. You can’t consume something that isn’t produced. You have to make things first. …”
“There are millions of employed Americans. How do you increase the demand for labor? You decrease the cost of labor. Regulations substantially increase the costs of employing people and as a result fewer people are employed.”
Schiff recommended that no more regulations be added and that congress begins to repeal existing regulations. Minimum-wage laws for example.
“You can’t lose your rights because you hire somebody; you can’t give workers some kind of special privily and then call it a worker’s right. Everybody has individual rights and you shouldn’t lose them because you hire somebody.”
“Bad regulation did not start under Obama. The problem with well meaning regulation is that the consequences are the exact opposite of the intent. Infrastructure spending doesn’t stimulate the economy; it drains the economy of resources. Infrastructure only helps in the long run if it raises the productivity of the nation. China can afford to put in roads. We are broke. We need to start making stuff before we can consider how to make our roads prettier.”
“99% of a [small/medium-size business’ income] is taxed at the marginal rate, so that the marginal rate is my rate. Feds take 35% of my income, another 3% for Medicare, local tax in the state of Connecticut (7%), and this is before I pay any property or sales taxes. I am already moving business to Singapore, the Caribbean. We are a high tax country, not a low tax country.”
“You can only borrow if someone is saving. There is a lender. The has to be something in it for the lender has to have something in it. Currently the banks are getting money from the government and buying treasuries, monetary policy that is stifling the savings that we need to grow the economy. You can always see the jobs that government creates, you can never see the jobs it destroys. All government can do is re-arrange the resources; it cannot create resources.”
“A sales tax should replace income tax. It would be much more conducive to tax people when they spend their wealth, not when they accumulate it.”
“Deficit spending is more damaging than taxation….”
“Interest rates [as we know] are being kept low. When they rise to approximate market rate, what effect till this have on business? banks which are kept afloat by the cheap money from the Fed will go insolvent. Their portfolios are loaded with low-yielding, long-term government bonds … keeping interest low creates inflation…”
“Henry Ford paid his workers $5 a day. Highest in the world at the time; an ounce and a quarter of gold. $2500 a week. They were paying no federal incomes taxes and no payroll taxes; there were no minimum wages and no unions. We paid the highest wages in the world but produces the best least expensive products. that was possible b/c we had the smallest government. Minimal regulations and no taxes. …”
[SNIP]
Notice how silent Dr. Heather Boushey, to Schiff’s right, has fallen—she is a popular panelist on the panel parade that infests cable, PBS, and the other networks.
Another thought: Ron Paul, who does not argue nearly as crisply and clearly as Schiff does, will need to make common cause with Mr. Schiff. Peter Schiff: United States Secretary of the Treasury in a future Paul cabinet.
