In recent days, we at CFIF have marked the ignominious one-year anniversary of the Biden Administration…
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Drug Price Controls: On 9/13, Let's End the Indefensible 9-13 Small Molecule/Large Molecule Protection Disparity

In recent days, we at CFIF have marked the ignominious one-year anniversary of the Biden Administration's misnamed "Inflation Reduction Act" (IRA) by noting its particularly negative impact on pharmaceutical innovation and, in turn, the nation's health and wellbeing.

As acknowledged by the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security  as well as groups like the American Cancer Society, Americans are already confronting alarming and unprecedented drug shortages in the wake of the IRA.

To mark today's date of September 13 - or 9/13 - it's appropriate to note a different but significant 9-13:  That refers to the indefensible distinction that the IRA makes between what are known as "small-molecule" and "large-molecule" drugs.

Specifically, the IRA imposes destructive price controls…[more]

September 13, 2023 • 03:24 PM

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The Climate Apocalypse is Nigh – This Time They Really Mean It Print
By Timothy H. Lee
Thursday, March 23 2023
[T]he U.N.’s latest climate report doesn’t even attempt to hide its social engineering and wealth redistribution ambitions. The specific numbers and catastrophe time horizons may change, but the underlying goal of stoking climate alarm for those purposes remains the same.

In a new report substantively indistinguishable from its previous reports stretching back several decades, the United Nations warned this week of a “ticking climate time bomb” that demands immediate (and costly) action.  

On June 30, 1989 – the week Milli Vanilli’s “Baby Don’t Forget My Number” topped the Billboard chart and five months before the Berlin Wall opened – the same U.N. warned that we only had a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect” lest nations literally disappear from the face of the earth by the year 2000:  

A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.   Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environmental Program, or UNEP.  He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.  

That report included another item worth noting in light of this week’s latest release:  

The most conservative scientific estimate [is] that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said Brown.  The difference may seem slight, he said, but the planet is only 9 degrees warmer now than during the 8,000-year Ice Age that ended 10,000 years ago.  

Over 30 years since that warning, however, we’re nowhere near that “most conservative scientific estimate” of a rise between 1 and 7 degrees.  According to this year’s report, temperatures are actually only “1.1° Celsius higher in 2011-2020 than 1850-1900,” obviously a far lengthier time window.  

In other words, the climate is warming by less than 0.01 degrees Celsius per year since before the Civil War.  That’s no “climate time bomb” under any rational definition.  

Moreover, according to its latest report, the U.N. has gone from predicting increases between 1 and 7 degrees over 30-year periods to more modest increases between 1.5° and 2.0° Celsius over the next 80 years.  

That’s quite a comedown, perhaps reflecting a humility brought on by decades of accumulating failed predictions.  Nevertheless, it constitutes an ongoing “time bomb” according to the U.N.  

It’s also important to highlight how the 1970s “climate consensus” agreed that global cooling, not global warming, presented the clear and present danger.  The April 28, 1975 edition of Newsweekreported that meteorologists were “almost unanimous” that “the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.”  Other mainstream media like Time, The Guardian and The New York Times similarly sounded the climate consensus that our planet faced an oncoming ice age.    

None of these particulars or contradictions matter to the climate-industrial complex, however.  What matters is maintaining a constant state of alarm in pursuit of wealth redistribution and social engineering.  

That’s not subjective criticism.  It’s laid bare in the actual contents of the U.N.’s latest report itself.  

Page 33 of the report leads with the heading “Equity and Inclusion,” and explicitly advocates “cash transfers” and other worldwide social engineering to achieve what it considers “social justice”:  

Prioritising equity, climate justice, social justice, inclusion and just transition processes can enable adaptation and ambitious mitigation actions and climate resilient development. …  Regions and people (3.3 to 3.6 billion in number) with considerable development constraints have high vulnerability to climatic hazards.  Adaptation outcomes for the most vulnerable within and across countries and regions are enhanced through approaches focusing on equity, inclusivity and rights-based approaches.  Vulnerability is exacerbated by inequity and marginalization linked to e.g., gender, ethnicity, low incomes, informal settlements, disability, age, and historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism, especially for many Indigenous Peoples and local communities.  Integrating climate adaptation into social protection programs, including cash transfers and public works programs, is highly feasible and increases resilience to climate change, especially when supported by basic services and infrastructure.  (Emphasis added.)

Accordingly, the U.N.’s latest climate report doesn’t even attempt to hide its social engineering and wealth redistribution ambitions.  The specific numbers and catastrophe time horizons may change, but the underlying goal of stoking climate alarm for those purposes remains the same.  

If it all feels like “Groundhog Day,” that’s for good reason.  The difference is that in the classic film, unlike climate alarmists, the protagonist actually learns from his mistakes and improves his behavior.  

Notable Quote   
 
"The 2024 presidential election is over a year away, but the left's legal assault on common-sense election integrity measures has already begun.Last month, a district court in San Antonio ruled that Texas cannot enforce the provision of Senate Bill 1 which established a voter identification requirement for mail in voting in Texas. The next day, a district court in Atlanta ruled against Georgia Senate…[more]
 
 
— Chad Ennis, Vice President of Honest Elections Project
 
Liberty Poll   

In your opinion, how likely is a federal government shutdown at the end of September, based on budgetary and other disagreements in the fractured House of Representatives?