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Category Archives: Politics

Participating in the Grand Democratic Experiment, one post at a time.

about that rejected Sanders campaign donation

by not another Rob?

Bernie Sanders rejects CEO Martin Shkreli’s campaign donation:

  1. Good for Bernie for rejecting the donation; doubly good for donating it to a clinic.
  2. I think it’s a mistake not to meet with Shkreli though. Regardless of whether he is the “poster boy for drug company greed”, rejecting someone out of hand without even hearing them out seems wrong. (And has a smell of rejecting due process.)
    1. Which, granted, I don’t think Shkreli has a leg to stand on w/r/t/ justifying his actions in the slightest – at least not in context of his much-publicized price hike on Daraprim ($13.50 to $750).
    2. AND/BUT/SO all the more reason to meet with him – because if nothing else, can you imagine the Good Laugh™ Bernie would get from listening to such a screed? (And/or maybe his physician recommended against such a meeting because it would just put him to foaming at the mouth?)

      SIDE NOTE: So about Shkreli’s justification… I would love to hear this one. How exactly do you justify an approx. 5555% increase in a drug that was developed 62 years ago, NOT by your company, and has been unencumbered by patents for many years?

  3. You can tell Shkreli is a shill because all his quotes seem to employ “sort of” and “kind of” as modifiers. Like he isn’t willing to just come out and say what he means.
  4. As for Shkreli’s remark about “[taking] risks for innovation” – maybe actually (you know) take those risks instead of trying to mooch off of the success of a drug developed in 1958 and not by you.

on Thiel on the education bubble

by Rob Friesel

Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch writing about Peter Thiel (“We’re in a Bubble and It’s Not the Internet. It’s Higher Education.”): But, he argues, that doesn’t mean it’s not an uncomfortable elitist dynamic that we should try to change. He compares it to a world in which everyone was buying guns to stay safe. Maybe they […]

a letter to our Senators about these TSA “enhanced patdowns”

by not another Rob?

The letter I wrote:

I am writing to urge you to please put an immediate stop to the horrific policies of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).  The recently instituted policies of the TSA have gone beyond reasonable and I feel are a viola…