Letters to the Editor
Jeffrey P. Harrison
Published Letters: 298 Editor's Choice: 36
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A teenager, a T-shirt....
[Read the article: A teenager, a T-shirt and ... terrorism?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]YES, Mr. Leonard. I couldn't agree more and couldn't have said it better. Unfortunately, most people lack the testosterone to tell such sanctimonious prigs to sit down, shut up, and mind their own business.
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IP vs. Social Justice
[Read the article: We need a new drug (system)]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]TANSTAAFL. - Robert Heinlein
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Mr. Leonard hit the nail on the head. Drug companies are not in the business of social justice ... but at least some governments are. I have little sympathy for countries like Brazil. If they want inexpensive AIDS drugs there are two things that they can do. One is to pay development costs for the drug and be able to get the drug at cost (and if they own the patent, sell the drug and collect the royalties themselves).
The other venue is the approval of a drug for sale. FDA rules have raised the cost of drug development by upwards of a half a billion dollars without a visible payback other than a delayed availability of the drug and an increased incentive to lie about it's efficacy. So license the drug for sale in Brazil with less ho-ha than the US requires.
Brazil may have a very legitimate motivation but doesn't legitimize the literal equivalent of highway robbery.
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Age of Deregulation?
[Read the article: Enron: Bad apple or poisoned orchard]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I object to the description of this as "the age of deregulation". The United States is the most regulated place on the planet, our only competition being maybe Europe. And Shrub & Co. have done nothing to slow the increasing spiral of regulation, law, and other governmental control on the body politic. What the current bozos in power have done is not deregulation, which is the reduction or elimination of regulation, but regulation in favor of certain industries that provide generous political contributions which is not the same thing at all. I've always found it interesting that I could be sued if someone slips and falls on my sidewalk which I don't own because the city has taken an easment for it but I cannot hold a corporation liable if my personal data which they are controlling is then used to perpetrate identity theft on me. Why is that?
To understand Enron, you need to go back a century to the trust busting days. Enron was as big and powerful as Standard Oil without John D. Rockefeller's business acumen. The government broke up the trusts because they were too large and getting to powerful. Like the 800 pound gorilla who can sit anywhere he wants, size engenders power. This nostrum applies to corporations and governments.
If you want to stop the excesses, both governmental and corporate, we need to make things smaller and more managable.
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Wait a minute
[Read the article: The "people responsible" for port deal? Bush, Rumsfeld say: Not us!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Isn't this a British company being bought by UAE? What do we have to say about it? If the ports in question aren't happy about a Middle Eastern Company running their operations, let the Port Authorities in question hire someone eles.
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No, give me a break Mr. Scalia
[Read the article: Scalia on detainee rights: "Give me a break"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Mr. Scalia and his ilk need to make up their minds.
Either we are at war, in which case captured warriors are accorded treatment prescribed by the Geneva convention or we are not at war, in which case the people who are running amok are criminals and are accorded the treatment for criminals under the Consititution. Why do they have rights? They're being charged under US law. Make up your mind. Are they being charged here or in their home country?
Of course, what Mr. Scalia and his ilk want is to pick and choose what rules, if any, they will agree to follow. They do this by creating a third leg. Not a prisoner of war, not a criminal and not free.
Let the reign of terror begin. Vote for your template today! This will be like:
The French Revolution
Argentina
El Salvadore
Chile
The cultural revolution
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Why are we worried about Iran?
[Read the article: The nuclear countdown]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You realize that the strategic doctrine of the US from the mid-50's through the end of the evil empire was called MAD. Mutual Assured Destruction. At this point with Iran it would be simply assured destruction for Iran. And these people, regardless of your xenophobia, are not stupid. The idea that they would want to attack us with a couple of puny A-bomhs is hardly credible.
And even if they would like to attack us, how could they do it? They have no blue water Navy, no ICBMs, and no intercontinental air force. And, please, no fruitcake suggestions that we should be worried that a sovereign state like Iran would attack by trying to sneak a nuclear weapon into the US and then set one off. I refer you to para. 1 above. In the absence of a major clamoring for American assistance from Iran's neighbors (definitely not likely), I can't see allies we need to come to the aid of.
So why is Shrub so hell bent on making an issue of this? The Iranians are within their rights under the non-proliferation treaty to enrich uranium (that was left in there so we could do it). They aren't supposed to be developing a bomb which they claim they are not. We, on the other hand, openly admit that we are. So.... who's in violation of the treaty?
The United States goaded Saddam Hussein and armed him to attack Iran in what was a bloody war back in the '80s in which Iran fought Hussein to a stand still. Not that the world came to their aid. The United States attacked Afghanistan after 9/11 because OBL was allegedly there. Of course, he had nothing to do with the Afghani government and, not surprisingly, we never got him, the guy with whom we had a legitimate bitch. And finally, Shrub decided to attack Iraq. Probably one of the few examples in US history of our attacking someone who hadn't attacked us. In this same time frame how many of its neighbors has Iran attacked? Well, none actually. So who do you suppose the world should be more afraid of: us or the Iranians?