Political Irony

© Pat Bagley

Is Dee Nye the evil twin sister of Bill Nye, the science guy?

The eastern half of the US is having a massive cold snap, and that can only mean that it is time for the climate deniers to come out of the woodwork. It doesn’t matter how many times that you explain to them that “climate” is not the same as “weather”. A side effect of climate change is that temperatures will become more extreme. So while the eastern US is freezing to death, even more other locations on earth will be feeling the burn instead. Indeed, we don’t have final numbers yet, but it looks like 2013 will have been the seventh hottest year on record.

Leading the climate deniers is Republican Senator James Inhofe, who on Monday called climate change science “laughable” and rigged. Ironically, his own home state of Oklahoma has recently been suffering through repeated severe droughts, and in 2011 had the hottest summer ever recorded in US history (hotter than 1934, the infamous “Dust Bowl” that led to the Great Depression).

Last week, the Supreme Court made another bizarre and wrong decision, led by the conservative justices. Here’s the summary from SCOTUSblog:

When petitioner had not yet been placed in custody or received Miranda warnings, and voluntarily responded to some questions by police about a murder, the prosecution’s use of his silence in response to another question as evidence of his guilt at trial did not violate the Fifth Amendment because petitioner failed to expressly invoke his privilege not to incriminate himself in response to the officer’s question.

He did not assert his right to remain silent, but instead was just silent. In the majority opinion, Justice Alito claims that in order to be protected by the fifth amendment, you have to affirmatively “invoke” the right to not answer questions. Yup, in order to remain silent, you have to formally say that you are invoking your fifth amendment right. And this is true even if you haven’t been read the Miranda warnings.

What’s next? In order to have free speech, I have to formally announce that I am exercising my first amendment rights? Do churches have to formally invoke their religious rights before they can exercise them? If I want to own a gun, I have to formally invoke the right to bear arms? If I want to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, I have to formally invoke that right (even when the government is doing the searches without my knowledge)?

Silly me. I thought that rights were things that I am born with and which always apply to me, not things I have to request or announce. I must have been confused when I thought the bill of rights was not a list of nice things that the government gives to me if I ask for them, but are meant to protect me against the abuse of power by the government.

This is another example of how we are losing our right to privacy. Imagine the police are questioning you about a crime and they ask you where you were on a certain date. If you refuse to answer, can this be used against you as evidence of your guilt? Maybe you didn’t want to answer because you were cheating on your girlfriend. Or you called in sick to work but were really playing golf. Those things are not illegal, but they can get you into serious trouble. Or maybe you haven’t done anything wrong at all, but you are afraid to answer the question because the real guilty party has threatened you if you talk to the police.

In this case, the defendant’s silence was used against him in a court of law. And the Supreme Court said that was ok. What good is a right if it is used against you if you exercise it? Is it even a right anymore?

Well, just to be on the safe side, I am hereby formally announcing that I am exercising my first amendment rights to free speech and freedom of press in creating this blog. There. Am I safe now?

© Matt Wuerker

Yes, the Supreme Court really did temporarily rule that employers can refuse to cover birth control in their health insurance plans based on religious beliefs. For now, the ruling only applies to a few Catholic groups involved in lawsuits challenging the ACA based on their claims that it infringes on their religious rights.

This is one I really don’t get. Nobody was forcing anyone to use birth control, so there is no violation of religious rights. And there is plenty of precedent that everyone must follow the law, even if it conflicts with their religious beliefs. After all, polygamy is illegal, even for Mormons who believe in it. And Rastafarians were never exempted from laws that made smoking marijuana a crime. As the comic points out, Christian Scientists don’t even believe in going to doctors, but they still have to provide health insurance to their employees.

I’m really surprised that conservatives are taking on this fight. They’ve been burned in the past by opposing birth control.

What makes this even more ironic is that conservatives are arguing that business owners can impose their religious beliefs on their employees, even employees who do not share their beliefs. Since when is it acceptable for an employer to tell their employees how to live their religious life?

UPDATE: It is worse than I thought. The specific lawsuit that prompted the Supreme Court injunction is from a group that is already exempt from providing contraception as part of their health insurance plan. What they don’t want to do is fill out the simple waiver form that exempts them as a religious organization. Why? Because if they do then it will allow their employees to get birth control elsewhere. So the group really is trying to control what their employees can do. If the Supreme Court rules in their favor, then the “religious freedom” of an employer will be placed above the religious freedom of real individual people.

I’ve made no secret that I believe in free markets (I have started several companies and have worked as a CEO) but I have two caveats: First of all, what I mean by free market is not always what politicians or conservative pundits mean when they use the term “free market”. A free market is one where there is real competition, and this always requires some level of regulation (for example, to eliminate monopolies). Second, I’m a pragmatist, not an ideologue, so I understand that there are markets where real competition is impossible.

We used to understand this, which is why the government controlled utilities and other markets where competition is not achievable. But somehow along the way the religion of less-regulation-is-always-better took over and we forgot about the era of robber barons and economic crashes that preceded proper regulation. (As a side note, as a pragmatist I also believe that regulations can be good or bad — our goal should be to eliminate bad regulations while creating and enforcing good regulations).

What this lengthy prologue is leading up to is a story in NPR today which points out a market that is obviously out of control. Drug company Gilead purchased a smaller company that had developed a cure for Hepatitis C. They then proceeded to bring this drug to market and are charging $1000 per pill, which means that the cost for a full course of treatment is a minimum of $84,000 just for the drug (which doesn’t include other medical costs including necessary companion drugs).

Drug researchers have estimated the cost of producing this drug as between $150 to $250 for the entire course of treatment, which means that the markup on this drug is 33,600%. Of course, drug companies claim that this kind of profit is required to overcome the costs of developing and testing a new drug.

Really? I’ll ignore the fact that Gilead didn’t actually develop the drug themselves. But how much money do they actually need? There are more than 3 million people with hepatitis C in the US alone, which means that Gilead stands to make up to $252 billion on this one drug just in the US (worldwide estimates put the number of people with hepatitis C at 170 million).

Unfortunately, the people who need this drug have little choice. Without treatment, they will likely die. Alternative treatments include things (like liver transplants) that cost even more and have bad side effects.

But what makes this worse is that this drug is closely related to antiviral drugs that were developed 20 years ago as a cure for HIV/AIDS. Governments, including the US government, paid for most of that research.

So in a “free” market, where a company was able to take advantage of massive amounts of government research, and which is protected by government-provided drug patents, whose customers need the product in order to survive, what is a fair price? Is there such a thing?

Maybe it is time to start considering the price to society. How many people will die in the name of drug company profits? How much will it damage our economy to have people wait until they need expensive and debilitating liver transplants because they couldn’t afford a drug that is inexpensive to manufacture?