How to control Big Pharma

Brownstone Institute does it again. 

The best summary of the problem and solutions by Clayton J. Baker, MD

https://brownstone.org/articles/six-simple-steps-to-pharma-reform/

How to eliminate the federal income tax - an experiment in collective AI use

 Welcome

this is an experiment in policy exploration at scale (many readers) using chatGPT as a rudimentary but fast researcher and calculator,

Disclaimer: Yes, yes, yes. There are many flaws to this investigation. First, the investigator (me) has questionable credentials (no PhD, oh my, only an MBA in International Finance and 50+ years in banking, corporate finance, and startup business management). Second, chatGPT is hardly a reliable failproof assistant. Third, like any policy proposal, it depends on the political perspective. Fourth, the devil is always in the details and one of those PhDs can find enough to sink this ship.  

Presuming you have nothing better to do, join me into the rabbit hole.

Questions: Could...

1. Federal Income tax be eliminated
2. Progressivity be maintained or increased
3. Government size and cost be reduced
4. ... add your own...

My chat with chatGPT (the rabbit hole) was instructive, Try your own with better questions

 https://chatgpt.com/share/6740c02f-968c-800c-905b-8da265a01569  (scroll to the top)

Comments welcome

A New Normal Is Coming

Reprint from X. 

This is a great assessment of how and why our world may finally change. Perhaps the Silent Majority has finally confronted the cost of the American Cultural Revolution we tolerated for years and called Woke

 Trump, His Disrupters, and a Chance to Return to Normalcy?

Many of Trump first-round picks share some common themes. One, many, who were in the past victimized by government bullies and cowardly bureaucratic grandees, or proved sharp critics of the administrative state, are now, in karma-style, in charge of the very agencies that hounded him. So, Elon Musk, perennial target of government regulatory functionaries, was once policed, but now he polices the bureaucratic police. Robert Kennedy, Jr., proposed overseer of government health programs, was often blasted as a crank by the subsidized scientists and the administrators within HHS whom he will now direct. Pete Hegseth fought the military DEI machinery while a solider in the ranks and wrote a book about the corruption of the Pentagon. He will now, if confirmed, run the Pentagon. Tulsi Gabbard was improperly put on a national security travel watch list as a supposed security threat—and now will be a guardian of our security as Director of National Intelligence. Tom Homan was derided by the Biden administration and its Homeland Security minions as a fanatic border hawk; now he will run ICE and deal with the detritus of Biden fanaticism on the border. Two, none of these appointments are traditional swamp creatures. Few rotate from the think tanks. This time around there are no retired “Wise Men” or retired four-stars. Few are Uniparty magnificoes revolving back into high government from their DC university or New York corporate and investment waystations. None are DEI, cover-our-identity-politics-base candidates. By design, their past government service resumes are thin—few past undersecretaries of these or special assistant to those. And there are not a lot of suffixed alphabetic letters or prefixed long-winded titles that adorn their names. In other words, they are vaxed from the sort of acculturated administrative state mindset that has alienated and terrified the citizenry. Three, they all share a reputation from the mainstream media, bicoastal elite, or administrative state guardians as a little “out there” or even “crazy” and “nuts”, whether RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, or Pete Hegseth. So, their opponents rightly fear they are immune from mainstream media disparagements, the usually leftwing generated hoaxes, and beltway tsk-tsk scorn. Fourth and finally, they are not radicals or nihilists. Rather, they are reformers who are trying to trim or eliminate bloated government machinery, or return institutions and agencies to their normal functions and original missions. In contrast, the last few years of Biden governance chaos and near insurrection were abnormal—and dangerous. Destroying the border and breaking the law to allow 12 million to enter illegally were nihilist. Stealthily routing government cash, to circumvent the law, to a communist Chinese-run viral gain-of-function engineering lab is beyond the belief. Creating a commissar system in the military that demanded ideological orthodoxy over meritocracy, or the Chairman of the JCS secretly communicating with his People’s Liberation Army counterpart to warn about his own commander-in-chief’s stability was insurrectionist. Weaponizing the DOJ by performance-art swat home raids on opponents, and collusion lawfare waged by local, state, and federal indictments against a former president and presidential candidate were un-American. Asymmetrical prosecutions and FBI fusion with social media to censor the news were sheer government anarchy. There are legitimate questions about the confirmability of Matt Gaetz, or his prosecutorial experience, or some of his alleged past excesses, but his very accusers were mostly quiet about the weirdos, creeps, and revolutionaries in the Biden administration—accused of stealing women’s luggage at airports, or lying that a subordinate “racist” border patrol whipped in slave-master fashion innocent would-be immigrants, or trying to fix a felonious presidential son’s sentencing to avoid the accustomed legal consequences of his criminal behavior. In sum, the currently loud censors have zero credibility given the unprofessional, weaponized, and nihilist  examples they have bequeathed.

I am garbage

I like to think I am not too old to learn a new strategy. So, I paid close attention and asked myself why would someone hope to convince a voter to possibly change sides by suggesting they are garbage? You can tell I AM GARBAGE and was not likely to become a turncoat, but still, why go on TV and call Gen Z's stupid, why call Hispanic and Black men mysoginist? The only reason I can fathom is an incredible level of arrogance, a belief so great of one's moral superiority, a claim to one's superior intelligence and education that divides "us the morally superior" from "them the garbage". 

That line of thinking started in 2015 with Hillary's claim that all "the college-educated" were on her side. Oops, not all were then, but from her loss, she and her ilk learned nothing. So Kamala served word salads to the same crowd with a few insults for spice. Even the college-educated found the salads lacking and sided and went for garbage.

One wonders if the genius class of Van Jones, Dana Bash, Jim Acosta, Anderson Cooper, etc, the list goes on across all networks, are low IQ impostors. But meritocracy, the little that still exists, has been around long, so that option is unlikely. What then? Arrogance is the likely answer. If your head is far enough up there, you can believe enough in your superior intellect and morality to actually try to compete with Don Lemon for the prize. And thanks to Obama's freedom to do propaganda at scale for years, the geniuses lost track that the garbage was not following instructions, was developing an independent mind snooping reality on X. Oops.

And so the surprise came. They did not take out the garbage, the garbage took them out. And that was the night that Woke died.

Deliverance

Best said by Jeffrey Tucker of Brownstone Institute (reprint)

My biggest shock this morning is discovering that the system still works. I almost can't believe it. I was on the verge of thinking that the entirety of what we call democracy was fake. What happened last night was real, and achieved through the system itself. 

Is this how revolution occurs in Western industrial democracies? That's the theory and we might be seeing the reality now. 

The next step is for those whom the people have elected to become the actual government and not the fakes that they have been for so very long. Especially from 2020 onward, we've been ruled domestically (but also globally) by a kind of behind-the-scenes junta of off-the-books bureaucrats whom no one elected. 

That must change, and it means disempowering in its entirety the complicated network of deep, middle, and shallow layers of the administrative state, the one built over war and crisis for 135 years. 

After the release of ALL political prisoners in a US version of Bastille Day, the gutting of the administrative state must be at the top of the list. We cannot have a genuine people's government unless the people regain control of "the machine". 

There is every reason to believe that the Trump transition team knows this.