US US Politics General - Discussion of President Biden and other politicians

 

[Potatoherder]

Just wait until the payment processors cut X off and Amazon blocks them from using AWS. The power-players have not yet begun to pull the levers they're capable of.

Which is odd cause we saw them pull more major levers for far lesser infractions. Guess they're worried someone like Musk could force an issue. I mean he threatened to sue if they took his (now ex) girlfriend out of Aquaman 2, after all.

Starlink plays a large part in that. That has a real chance of being the biggest ISP in the world and there is no other rival.

 

[The Hardest R]

Just a reminder that Tesla started getting fucked with until Elon backtracked much of what he promised to roll out for free speech protection on Twitter, which resulted in investigations getting dropped. I suspect he does care about free speech but not at the expense of his other businesses. He'd rather be worth $200-300 billion than for us to call someone a nigger on Twitter. A rational decision on his part but he’s not going to be there for us.

 

[Scale Smerch]

I don't know man. Musk is such a fucking agent of caos I don't know what to think anymore. He's a based cuck if you will.

Musk has a mission to see a man on Mars and I'm all for letting him go at it regardless of the chaotic waffling. Nothing will kill off the grift faster than opening a new frontier to human expansion and revealing new sources of revenue.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

The problem is the country Musk works for is more interested in HRT and nigger welfare than scientific advancement. Until America has the attitude of the 1960s--really the 50s even though the 60s gets the credit--space travel is impossible to conceive.

Musk has a mission to see a man on Mars and I'm all for letting him go at it regardless of the chaotic waffling. Nothing will kill off the grift faster than opening a new frontier to human expansion and revealing new sources of revenue.

 

[Sithis]

Musk has too much money and too much power for them to give him the Null treatment. They can't risk such a direct attack like that. I wouldn't be surprised if some of it is also them being unwilling to go all out on one of their fellow elites. "Mr. Kennedy mentions a "plot" during a speech at Columbia University, he's out, no discussion, no matter that we got him elected. But a student of ours, an initiate -- oh, heavens, no!"

There is also the fact Elon has shown himself to care more about the power itself then the money, which is also what these people do but they aren't used to having it done against them in such a scale. If Elon just comes into office one day and says "sell half of my Tesla stock" he can reasonably cause a economic implosion on his own and there is nothing anyone can do because it's his stocks and he is allowed to sell them. If he simply orders all of it sold at market he could crash the market. He has the funds to pull a reverse J.P. Morgan and crash the economy.

But just like any man, Musk has pressure points. The people we are talking about aren't above sending someone to "talk" to him using "enhanced" methods if it came down to it.

 

[The Last Stand]

I have a sneaking suspicion that if Apple, Nike, and Pepsi promised to come back under the condition that Alex receives a lifetime ban without exception, Elon would ban Alex without question and go back to his spiel about protecting children (even when he can't be bothered to raise his own.) This is our free speech champion?

I had always thought the argument for "free speech" in context with the Internet to be dumb in execution. These alternative sites based on "free speech" typically devolves into overall degeneracy. That is not attractive to advertisers.

 

[ForTheHoard]

These alternative sites based on "free speech" typically devolves into overall degeneracy.

Would you say that reddit, facebook, and mastodon are any more or less degenerate than "free speech" spaces?

 

[Celebrate Nite]

Would you say that reddit, facebook, and mastodon are any more or less degenerate than "free speech" spaces?

Hell, just look at Discord... funded by big names and it's one of the most degenerate places on the internet.

 

[mandatorylurk]

Yesterday by all accounts Trump had a good speech at the New York Young Republicans Club gala, but now Meatball has to resort to 2004 levels of Fag Hannity fake outrage support the troops bullshit misrepresentation to pretend he still matters.

 

[The Hardest R]

Yesterday by all accounts Trump had a good speech at the New York Young Republicans Club gala, but now Meatball has to resort to 2004 levels of Fag Hannity fake outrage support the troops bullshit misrepresentation to pretend he still matters.

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Reminds me of the primary debate before the 2016 SC primary where Trump said we never should’ve been to Iraq and all the other Gay Old Pervert candidates were pointing and sputtering about how this meant Blumpf was shit talking the troops and that this was truly the end for him. Trump of course handily won South Carolina and Jeb! called off his campaign afterwards. I guess Zion Ron is hellbent on making the same mistakes as the 2016-era Republicans.

 

[The Last Stand]

Would you say that reddit, facebook, and mastodon are any more or less degenerate than "free speech" spaces?

You tell me. I believe Facebook (Meta by extension) is on the decline. What advertiser or "normie" would look at Rumble with its primary focus on "alternative content" which its base is centered around politics? I'm just making an example. Hell, look at the GTA thread on THIS website after GTA VI was announced. No suitable discussion.

 

[Mr Bunny]

Also on doom day-30th birthday
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[Netizennameless]

Just wait until the payment processors cut X off and Amazon blocks them from using AWS. The power-players have not yet begun to pull the levers they're capable of.

This mindless cope is really tiring. The payment processors are in no condition to cut off X from anything. The good old days of 0% interest rates from the fed are over. There is no free money to bribe these companies with anymore and investors are now demanding profits and solid financials. Several large Republican states cut Blackrock et. al off from more than $1 trillion dollars of capital via state pension funds. Companies are being sued for violating their fiduciary duty to the shareholders. The elites pushed the culture war way too far and they know it.

On top of that, X is in the process of BECOMING a payment processor.

Lastly, Elon Musk is a critical piece of the US space program. SpaceX is the ONLY way for the US to send something (like a satellite) to space without Russia's help. Ignoring Tesla, SpaceX is worth nearly $200 billion and is a private company. As another poster said, it's on a path to being the world's largest ISP. The elites need Musk in the fold in some capacity.

 

[tehpope]

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/biden-wants-seize-patents-pricey-drugs-and-use-government-make-them-cheaper

https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/biden-wants-to-seize-patents-of-pricey-drugs-and-use-government-to-make-them-cheaper-5543138

Bolds are ZHs.

The Biden administration has proposed a new rule that would allow federal authorities to seize the patents of costly drugs that were developed using taxpayer dollars and to let third parties use those patents to make the drugs available more cheaply.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, on Dec. 7 published a set of draft guidelines for government agencies to evaluate when it might be appropriate to invoke what are known as "march-in" rights under the legal framework of the Bayh-Dole Act.

The Bayh-Dole Act, which is shorthand for the University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act of 1980, grants the government the authority to suspend the patents of products of inventions that were developed with federal funding if those products or inventions are not made available to the public.

The new proposed guidelines, which were reviewed by The Epoch Times, seek to modify the Bayh-Dole Act in such a way as to make high price alone (of a product or invention developed using taxpayer dollars) a sufficient condition to trigger the government's exercise of the act's march-in provisions.

The march-in provisions—which the government has been asked to invoke in the past but never has—would let authorities seize the patents of drugs deemed too expensive (when offered for sale by the original patent holder) and grant licenses to third parties to produce those drugs to sell more cheaply.

"We'll make it clear that when drug companies won't sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less," White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a call with reporters.

The draft will be published in the Federal Register on Dec. 8 and is being subjected to a 60-day public comment period.

President Joe Biden hailed the draft proposal as a way to rein in "Big Pharma price gouging," while the main pharmaceutical industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said it would be a loss to American patients by causing government-funded research to sit "on a shelf, not benefiting anyone."

Competing Takes​

Under the new draft guidelines, the government would be allowed to consider "reasonableness of the price" when considering whether to invoke the march-in rights.

It gives federal agencies the power to act "if it appears that the price is extreme, unjustified, and exploitative of a health or safety need."

While the initial price of a given drug when it's first launched is to be considered, another possibility for triggering the use of the march-in provisions would be a "sudden, steep price increase in response to a disaster."

President Biden said in a statement that his administration is proposing that if a drug is made using taxpayers funds and it's "not reasonably available to Americans," then the government could "march in" and license that drug to a producer who can make it and sell it for less.

"It's good for competition. It's good for our economy," the president said. "And it's good for the millions of Americans who can't afford their medications—who know all too well that fine line between dignity and dependence that the price of a prescription drug can draw."

The proposal drew a critical reaction from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) trade group.

"This would be yet another loss for American patients who rely on public-private sector collaboration to advance new treatments and cures. The administration is sending us back to a time when government research sat on a shelf, not benefitting anyone," PhRMA said in a post on X.

The trade group argued that the reason America leads the world in medicine development is precisely because the current structure of the law enables the private sector to work with government and academic research centers "for the benefit of patients."

"This latest proposal is yet another bad policy from an administration intent on ceding our life science leadership to other countries and robbing Americans of hope that comes from new treatments and cures," the group added.

In a blog post, PhRMA said that the Bayh-Dole works well in its current form and that, over the past 25 years that it has been in effect, it has contributed $1.9 trillion to the U.S. economy and created 6.5 million jobs.

What Do the Authors of the Bayh-Dole Act Say?​

The authors of the Bayh-Dole Act, the late senators Birch Bayh (D-Ind.) and Robert Dole (R-Kan.), have publicly stated that the law they developed did not intend for the government to be able to set prices on products.

"The law makes no reference to a reasonable price that should be dictated by the government," the pair wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post. "This omission was intentional; the primary purpose of the act was to entice the private sector to seek public-private research collaboration rather than focusing on its own proprietary research."

The two senators raised the argument that, for every single taxpayer dollar that the government spends on research of a given product or invention, private industry must spend "at least $10" to bring it to market and that the aim of their law was to "spur interaction" between public and private research so that patients could benefit from scientific innovations sooner.

"Government alone has never developed the new advances in medicines and technology that become commercial products," the pair wrote, adding that the intention of the law was newer to allow the government to revoke a licence on the basis of the pricing of the product or in some way tied to the profitability of a company that has commercialized it.

"The law we passed is about encouraging a partnership that spurs advances to help Americans," they wrote.

Under the Bayh-Dole Act, the government has the power to seize the patents of federally funded medicines but not using price as a criterion.

The proposal comes as the Democrat Party's more progressive wing has heaped criticism on drugmakers over high prices of their products and has called on the Biden administration to use march-in power to lower prices.

 

[KoopsInk]

Oh goly gee, I wonder where that is gonna lead too.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

So they are going to formalize the cartel and oligopoly of the FDA and Pharma-Industry.

All the "expensive" drugs get seized, production given to the government and their partners, and the only way anyone can ever afford them is to be a part of the mandatory insurance they run.

 

[tehpope]

I'm pretty sure this is textbook fascism.

 

[Suah Noteb]

So they are going to formalize the cartel and oligopoly of the FDA and Pharma-Industry.

All the "expensive" drugs get seized, production given to the government and their partners, and the only way anyone can ever afford them is to be a part of the mandatory insurance they run.

Inversely the threat of having their patents and ip stolen would discourage companies from jacking up their prices so high, and the government will contract out the license to multiple companies that specialize in generics.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

You tell me. I believe Facebook (Meta by extension) is on the decline. What advertiser or "normie" would look at Rumble with its primary focus on "alternative content" which its base is centered around politics? I'm just making an example. Hell, look at the GTA thread on THIS website after GTA VI was announced. No suitable discussion.

I think subject matter is largely irrelevant. What drives all of it is volume. There's just more. Everywhere. Politics or not, all the communities are bigger.

Your prior example of Rumble not being of use to normal people... that strikes me as off as well. Their counterpart to the Rumble service is Locals and by all regards the discussion there is significantly better. They regulate the volume problem with a pay wall and like it or not, it mostly works. If there is an issue, it is that it is easy to get put in a group of only one opinion; so users are going to have to be more critical on their own and many will naturally fail because this is a hard thing for us to overcome.

It's still out there but you have to look for it. Schizophrenic moderation also does not help.

When staff decide they want a specific set of rules for a given area and mostly stick to it unless they've also decided they want to troll or have fun... well that undermines everything far worse than the users. Inevitably good discussion is killed by ignorant moderation. One day you are moderating out disruptive content or discouraging it and the very next day you're laughing along with the people disrupting good threads (because it is just dumb political junk) and mocking users that have problems.

It isn't as bad here, but it is here. Moderation staff can't have it both ways. Admittedly our problems relate more to the Zionist niggers that Josh keeps hiring.

 

[ForTheHoard]

Seizing patents seems like a very Putin thing to do. I'm less concerned about the reasons why and more concerned about opening the door for the government seize patents. Didn't they already break their own rules to appease Disney by keeping Mickey Mouse from entering the public domain?