DL Open Thread Tuesday March 8th 2022
Just take a look at this graph. We’ve got the most expensive third-world health outcomes money can buy!
In Delaware we have a congressional delegation fully in the pocket of the for profit multi-billion-dollar health care industry. Our local legislators, to be honest, are no better. They’ve all been bought off and bribed in exchange for favorable legislation. As a result, we have the world’s shittiest, most expensive health care. Huzzah!
As you read THIS SHIT please keep in mind that Bill Barr is exactly the type of “good” Republican that Senator Chris Coons thinks the Democratic Party can win over if only the dirty liberals would shut the fuck up for a minute
Former Attorney General Bill Barr has been called “lazy” and “cowardly” by former President Donald Trump, while Barr has described Trump as “off the rails” and called his push to discredit the 2020 election “a farce.”
Yet despite the ugly back and forth between the two, Barr said on TODAY Monday that he would still vote for Trump in the 2024 presidential election if Trump becomes the Republican nominee.
“Because I believe that the greatest threat to the country is the progressive agenda being pushed by the Democratic Party, it’s inconceivable to me that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee,” Barr told Savannah Guthrie. “It’s hard to project what the facts are going to turn out to be three years hence, but as of now, it’s hard for me to conceive that I wouldn’t vote for the Republican nominee.”
I can’t imagine what Barr and his fellow “good” Republicans imagine the “progressive agenda” to be. [Also, Note to Senator Coons – They are openly laughing at you, Bro. There are no “good” Republicans.]
Biden’s messaging shop makes the “ye olde cooperage” in Williamsburg Va look like a highly efficient clean room operation. The “Y0u mU3t dRive t0o w0rk!” messaging is exhibit #1.
Supply and Demand
I don’t think it can be overstated just how troubling it is that in the middle of a massive international crisis, which is in part a fossil fuel cost crisis, the administration kept going with its “EVERYONE GO BACK TO WORK” nonsense.It was nonsense before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but much like “people deciding on their own to wear masks during Covid,” people working from home is a freebie. Without any effort whatsoever the pressure on fuel demand is reduced.
[Econ 101 Lecture Hat] when supply is very inelastic, tiny increases in demand can hugely increase prices. Tiny reductions can hugely decrease them!
Price of fuel is both a real concern and a political one, but wherever your chair is in White House meetings, I suspect keeping gas prices from doubling is a more pressing concern than futilely trying to re-establish some imagined idea of 2015 normality or propping up commercial real estate prices (whatever the hell the “go back to work” nonsense is about).
The price we pay for drugs remains the most obvious example of the political class being in thrall to Big Pharma, also the easiest to solve, negotiate the price of drugs for all Americans. I will never live to see universal healthcare here, then again I might not live to see legalizes marijuana either.(Damnable Kop Kabal!)
I’m old enough to remember the pre-Reagan days when we had regulated industries that were barred by law from price gouging. Even without universal healthcare, just going back to telling key industries that their patriotic net profit can’t be more than “$X billion” would go a long way. But that would be communism, which makes Joe Scarborough sad.
I was expecting but didn’t find a mention of Delaware this WaPo op piece: