You Didn't Sweat, He Did - WSJ.com

You Didn't Sweat, He Did - WSJ.com

By JAMES TARANTO

"If you've got a business, you didn't build that." If the World's Greatest Orator turns out to be a one-term president, it is likely to go down as the most memorable utterance of his career. Mitt Romney certainly hopes that happens. HotAir.com's Ed Morrissey has highlights of Mitt Romney's response, in a speech yesterday at Irwin, Pa.:

The idea to say that Steve Jobs didn't build Apple, that Henry Ford didn't build Ford Motor, that Papa John didn't build Papa John Pizza, that Ray Kroc didn't build McDonald's, that Bill Gates didn't build Microsoft, you go on the list, that Joe and his colleagues didn't build this enterprise, to say something like that is not just foolishness, it is insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America, and it's wrong.

And by the way, the president's logic doesn't just extend to the entrepreneurs that start a barber shop or a taxi operation or an oil field service business like this and a gas service business like this, it also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themself [sic] up a little further, that goes back to school to get a degree and see if they can get a little better job, to somebody who wants to get some new skills and get a little higher income, to somebody who have, may have dropped out that decides to get back in school and go for it. . . . The president would say, well you didn't do that. You couldn't have gotten to school without the roads that government built for you. You couldn't have gone to school without teachers. So you didn't, you are not responsible for that success. President Obama attacks success and therefore under President Obama we have less success and I will change that.

I've got to be honest, I don't think anyone could have said what he said who had actually started a business or been in a business. And my own view is that what the President said was both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a president of the United States. It goes to something that I have spoken about from the beginning of the campaign. That this election is, to a great degree, about the soul of America. Do we believe in an America that is great because of government or do we believe in an America that is great because of free people allowed to pursue their dreams and build our future?

There's a website called didntbuildthat.com with a variety of hilarious treatments of the Obama philosophy. Of course, whoever's running the site didn't build that. As he acknowledges, Al Gore did. And hey, remember Julia, Barack Obama's composite girlfriend? At 42, she starts a Web business. Under President Obama, she didn't build that.
Obama may be God's gift to comedy, but Romney is right that the philosophical stakes here are serious. The president's remark was a direct attack on the principle of individual responsibility, the foundation of American freedom. If "you didn't build that," then you have no moral claim to it, and those with political power are morally justified in taking it away and using it to buy more political power. "I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Obama said in another candid moment, in 2008.
This isn't even Obama's only such revelatory comment of the past week. Politico.com reports that the president, in an interview with WTOL-TV of Toledo, Ohio, let the mask slip again when asked about the ObamaCare mandate tax. "It's less a tax or a penalty than it is a principle--which is you can't be a freeloader on other folks when it comes to your health care, if you can afford it," he said.
Of course this is a dodge. The administration claimed that the mandate was not a tax for political purposes but was a tax for legal purposes. Chief Justice John Roberts tied himself in knots to accept the argument Obama is now running away from. Between them, the solicitor general and the chief justice look as if they were too clever by 1.
What's objectionable about Obama's comment, however, is not "tax" or "penalty" or even "principle." It's the way he uses the word "freeloader."
Normally we think of a freeloader as somebody who sponges off others, which in the context of public policy means the government. A freeloader is an able-bodied welfare recipient, or someone who fakes a disability to collect Supplemental Security income, or who waits until his unemployment runs out before looking for a job.

Associated Press

The sweat of his brow made America great.

Now, think about how the ObamaCare mandate tax is structured. As Roberts noted in his opinion for the court in NFIB v. Sebelius, "It does not apply to individuals who do not pay federal income taxes because their household income is less than the filing threshold in the Internal Revenue Code. For taxpayers who do owe the payment, its amount is determined by such familiar factors as taxable income, number of dependents, and joint filing status."
The only people who pay the ObamaCare mandate tax are people who make a living. Actual freeloaders are exempt. What Obama calls a freeloader is someone who makes his own money and pays his taxes but does not spend his money in the government-approved way.
The Obama campaign hotly disputes Romney's contention that the president meant what he said. A "fact check" from the Obama-Biden "Truth Team" (formerly Attack Watch) claims that Romney "is taking President Obama's words out of context" to produce "a complete distortion." Here is the full context, as presented by the Truth Team:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

The Team then explains: "The President's full remarks show that the 'that' in 'you didn't build that' clearly refers to roads and bridges--public infrastructure we count on the government to build and maintain."
That's bunk, and not only because "business" is more proximate to the pronoun "that" and therefore its more likely antecedent. The Truth Team's interpretation is ungrammatical. "Roads and bridges" is plural; "that" is singular. If the Team is right about Obama's meaning, he should have said, "You didn't build those."
Barack Obama is supposed to be the World's Greatest Orator, the smartest man in the world. Yet his campaign asks us to believe he is not even competent to construct a sentence.

Obama 7.13.2012: If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. - YouTube

Obama 7.13.2012: If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. - YouTube

Obama: Health care law 'is here to stay' - POLITICO.com

Obama: Health care law 'is here to stay' - POLITICO.com

EXCERPTS:

"I'm running because I believe that in American no one should go bankrupt because they get sick," Obama said. To “try and move forward and make sure that every American has affordable health insurance and that the insurance companies are treating them fairly. That’s what we fought for, that’s what we're going to keep. We are moving forward.”

"We will not go back to the days when insurance companies pray on the sick," Obama said

QUESTIONS:

1.

LearnLiberty | Learn about the ideas of a free society

LearnLiberty | Learn about the ideas of a free society

Hospitals fight drug scarcity, fear patients harmed | Reuters

Hospitals fight drug scarcity, fear patients harmed | Reuters
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, pharmacists are using old-fashioned paper spreadsheets to track their stock of drugs in short supply - a task that takes several hours each day.
Most of the hospital's medicines - with usage estimated at $100 million a year - are tracked by automated systems that allow for quick reorders when the supply runs low. But these automated systems, designed to help the hospital avoid purchases and storage costs of unused pills and vials, do not work if it is uncertain when the next batch of drugs will come in.

A few hundred medicines make the list of drugs in short supply: anesthetics, drugs for nausea and nutrition, infection treatments and diarrhea pills. A separate list has scarce cancer drugs for leukemia or breast cancer.
"Now we have to go through the pharmacy and count those drugs on a daily basis ... to make sure we don't run out," said Ed Szandzik, director of pharmacy services at the hospital for over a decade.
The growing scarcity of sterile, injectable drugs is one of the biggest issues confronting hospitals across the country, and will be a key issue at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago this weekend.
Health officials blame the shortages on industry consolidation that has left only a handful of generic manufacturers of these drugs, even as the number of drugs going off patent is growing. Some drugmakers have been plagued by manufacturing problems that have shut down multiple plants or production lines, while others have stopped producing a treatment when profit margins erode too far.
Some medicines have been periodically short in the past, doctors and pharmacists say, but the number of drug shortages has escalated in recent years, jumping from 56 in 2006 to 250 last year, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration figures.
Generic drugmakers like U.S.-based Hospira Inc and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, an Israeli company, say they are building new facilities to prevent future shortages.
But in the meantime, pharmacies around the country are counting pills, begging neighboring hospitals for extra supplies and scouring the Internet for news of additional supply disruptions.
When rumors surface of an impending shortage, some pharmacies rush to buy up more than they need, likely leading to bigger shortages, analysts and other pharmacists said.
All of this requires regular attention from hospitals to manage the crisis. At Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., pharmacists and administrators meet weekly to discuss just how dire the situation is for different medicines.
"Every Wednesday before we have that (meeting), I have a bit of anxiety," said Ursula Tachie-Menson, acting chief of the hospital's pharmacy division. She spends about 30 percent of her time each week addressing shortage-related problems.
"Out of all the (21) years I have been practicing, these drug shortages have been one of the biggest challenges," she said.
EARLY WARNING SYSTEM
The FDA has been acting under an October executive order from President Barack Obama to fill in the gaps. It has had success getting an early warning from drug companies when they foresee a new shortage, allowing the agency to persuade other manufacturers to increase their production or look overseas to guarantee supply.
"I can tell you that there's not a single company I'm aware of out there that isn't talking to the FDA," said David Gaugh, head of regulatory sciences at the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, referring to the trade group's members.
The FDA said early notification has helped prevent shortages of 128 drugs in six months. It also estimates the rate of new shortages is slowing, with half the number of new scarce drugs this year compared with 2011.
There are currently about 130 drugs in short supply listed on the FDA's website.
But surveys and anecdotes keep piling up, showing doctors' efforts to find scarce drugs have not become easier. This month, a website for U.S. oncologists, MDLinx, surveyed 200 doctors and found more than 90 percent of them have experienced shortages of key cancer drugs.
CANCER, ANESTHESIA AND NUTRITION
A clinical nutrition group, the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN), found that 70 percent of its 800 members who responded to an online survey, said they had seen shortages of adult injectable multi-vitamins, used for basic nutrition for patients with intestinal issues. ASPEN members responding to the survey included doctors, nurses and pharmacists.
More than a quarter were not giving their patients multi-vitamins because of the shortages, placing them at risk of severe vitamin deficiencies that can lead to issues like anemia, due to a lack of folate, or scurvy, which happens when people do not get vitamin C.
In extreme cases, a deficiency of a type of B vitamin called thiamine can lead to cardiac arrest or death.
"This is an act of daily living for people now," said Jay Mirtallo, president of the group. "How that can be acceptable, I don't understand."
When a drug is not available, doctors have to seek alternatives, which may not work as well or cost more money. Others have to ration limited supplies of a life-saving treatment to only those who need it most.
Dr. Steven Allen, a specialist in blood cancers at North Shore University Hospital in New York, recently treated a young woman who had suffered several relapses of a life-threatening cancer known as acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Allen found a combination that involved thiotepa, an older drug his patient had not tried and could tolerate.
"When I ordered it, I was informed that there was none available, and it couldn't be obtained," said Allen, also chair of the committee on practice at the American Society of Hematology. He substituted a similar drug, but one that the woman had already taken. "We tried to make up a dose that was equivalent to thiotepa and hoped for the best. ... But I think it may have compromised her care."
On May 14, the FDA announced it would allow temporary imports of thiotepa made by Italian company Adienne Pharma & Biotech, to relieve manufacturing delays at Bedford, Ohio-based Bedford Laboratories, a unit of the private German company Boehringer Ingelheim that is the only approved manufacturer for the United States. Bedford said in April it did not know when further shipments would be available once its supplies ran out.
Imports have not helped anesthesiologists like Dr. Jason Soch, who hears about a new shortage nearly every week during his rotations at several surgical centers in Philadelphia. These are often "workhorse" drugs such as fentanyl, midazolam and propofol, used every day during surgery.
"It seems like as soon as one drug is no longer in shortage, we get an email from the hospital pharmacist that they're on their last box of another," he said.
Every disruption forces doctors to change dosing, or give new drug combinations they may not be as familiar with.
"I didn't envision this when I went to anesthesia," Soch said. "I'd figured we'd have whatever we needed."
SCRAMBLING FOR A FIX
The problem has inspired some creative solutions, like a drug shortages mobile application called RxShortages that allows medical and pharmacy staff to track new drug shortages posted on websites, including the FDA's. Mick Schroeder, a pharmacy resident who created the app, said it has been downloaded about 25,000 times.
Brooke Bernhardt, an oncology pharmacist at Texas Children's Hospital, said she checks RxShortages at least once a day.
"Unfortunately, at any point we expect a drug to go on back order," she said.
Szandzik, the pharmacy director at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, admits he would buy a larger quantity of drugs than usual if it became available.
"If I have to get one or two months' supply, I'll buy it, because our patients need it," he said. "Hoarding is in the eye of the beholder."
Some distributors and manufacturers prevent hoarding by allocating drugs based on historical demand. Other pharmacists say it is natural to want to buy more to ensure supply.
"Why did it ever have to get to this point in the first place?" Szandzik asked. "It takes a lot of hours, a lot of labor, a lot of luck to make sure our patients are safe. ... And I don't see it getting better for a while."
(Reporting by Anna Yukhananov; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Jackie Frank and Jan Paschal)

QUESTIONS:

1. Why you do you think there is a shortage of these drugs?
2. Did the article say anything about what has happened to the price of these drugs?
3. Based on what the article says, and doesn't say, who or what is being relied on to direct how resources in the drug sector of the economy will be used, government planners or market forces?
4. What would happen if producers of these drugs were free to charge whatever prices they wanted?

'Meaningful Work' - Thomas Sowell

RealClearPolitics - 'Meaningful Work'

In the real world, many things are done simply because they have to be done, not because doing them brings immediate pleasure to those who do them. Some people take justifiable pride in working to take care of their families, whether or not the work itself is great.

Some of our more Utopian intellectuals lament that many people work "just for the money." They do not like a society where A produces what B wants, simply in order that B will produce what A wants, with money being an intermediary device facilitating such exchanges.

Some would apparently prefer a society where all-wise elites would decide what each of us "needs" or "deserves." The actual history of societies formed on that principle -- histories often stained, or even drenched, in blood -- is of little interest to those who mistake wishful thinking for idealism.

"The Improprieties of the Pretense of Knowledge" - Cato lecture by Daniel B. Klein

Daniel B. Klein \