Indeed. Only for the reason that I’m pretty sure I know who you are now. Just needed confirmation.
Still, I’m glad you’re ok after all the shit that’s happened in the past year.
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Hey Zep! 
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You had no credible arguments for your position. Just a bunch of right-wing bullshit. I bet your so proud to defend the indefensible without any substance.
I’m not a right winger.
Zep calls everyone a right winger.
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Yeah it bothers me to no end how she and others confuse “profit” with “top line revenue”, which are not the same fucking things.
I am absolutely not a fan of direct marketing really, but I will say as a biochem guy it makes it easier to look into them - there are so many drugs in the market that it would be hard to look into things otherwise, no matter how much expertise.
I don’t know anything about the marketing costs, but do know that the figure I cited earlier is for development and FDA approval only, so it doesn’t take into account anything after the drug hits market.
Exactly why they use it. Well, that and in her case likely ignorance 
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Because optically it’s a lose-lose battle. It doesn’t matter what he says and how correct he is, she is going to win the PR battle and get to go viral. So he decided not to pick that hill to die on.
AOC is stupid about a lot of things, but drumming up support in her base, drama, and getting viral views are not in that category.
Pricing of drugs has a LOT of issues. Gouging is one, but not everyone is Martin Skreli. In fact in many ways the insurance and healthcare system in this country affects pharma negatively. To be sure they are big enough companies to lobby and use leverage to help themselves - I am not suggesting they are simply victims (which I am sure you know). I am saying for Ed’s sake that it’s a more complicated situation than political figures or activists often portray it as.
Not to mention that the pockets you need to fund research are very deep. In a very limited way it is analogous to being a professional poker player - no matter how good you are over the table you need to have the bankroll to be able to survive the swings.
You’re going to make the correct move mathematically and much of the time still be wrong and get taken for money. You’re acting with incomplete information. And sometimes you just run bad luck for several weeks or months. You need the bankroll to be able to survive the short term swings in finance even if you are ALWAYS a net positive in the long run.
This is how it almost always ends with Zeppelin/Ed.
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Agreed. Even with access to their finances, they could engage in lots of creative accounting that would take a good team of independent auditors months to find any actual fault assuming that’s the case. I don’t think any of them are saints. I also doubt the drug would have been created without corporate greed. And in an official hearing, you can’t just go “people are dying blah blah blah” for political points. You need to bring out some kind of evidence so people, even members of the public, with expertise in this kind of stuff take you seriously and decide to pursue the matter further. That’s kinda my point.
As a sort of olive branch to Zep, I’ll just leave this here. This is the real shit:
I seriously can’t wrap my head around this shit.
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A complete, unmitigated catastrophe lol. I remember some serious enthusiasm in the early days about having that tech at my fingertips… and then having a lot of questions in my head about their testing and feasibility long before everything became public.
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I completely understand why the public is outraged over recent excessive force cases. The thing I don’t understand is how people think defunding the police (which would surely equate to less training in departments/agencies), would help reduce excessive force, implicit bias ect. If anything departments need more funding. More funding would help to provide officers with adequate training in mental health intervention, working with victims of crimes, de-escalation, appropriate use of force ect. More funding could also mean higher wages and higher standards for entry level officers. We want people who are smart and skilled enough to do this job and be able to handle life or death situations appropriately in the profession. Trust me, those who really would do a good job are just going to go into a different profession when the pay is as low as it is in most parts of the U.S. Low pay, low educational standards, restrictive old-school police admin and you’re not going to get the best and the brightest on board.
Because the tagline “defund” is misleading. It’s really “reallocate funding” to different parts of the dept, or to new divisions, or to social programs designed to reduce recidivism etc. It’s a push to reform PDs, how their budgets are spent, and where resources are allocated.
It’s creating programs so that specialists in mental health can respond to someone in crises instead of a cop who received 12hrsof training 24 months ago. It can take the burden off cops to be excellent at everything and narrow their scope of operation.
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That’s what leftists backtracked to after the absurdity of defunding became crystal clear. There are plenty of clips on the internet of morons demanding defunding and completely abolishing the police.
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yep. Lets just leave it at that.
This article addresses directly CG’s point.
It’s tough to navigate. Complicated issue man. Yes, we do need more funding allocated for reducing social issues that cause crime. Not sure if it’s a good idea to divert this from departments. They are typically underfunded and rely heavily on grants for basic needs. I’m a cop, but my educational background in in Social Work/mental health. I’ve seen a lot of officers lack basic understanding of mental health, addiction etc. At the same time, a lot of mental health related calls have the potential to turn violent or are intertwined with the need for an LEO’s skill set. Think calls where a person is in a delicate mental state and they have a firearm to their own head, or is flagging other people. Or the high, naked guy will fight anyone who gets close. It’s easier for a mental health professional to use their skill set in a sterile environment. Therapy sessions with CBT Motivational Interviewing , etc. If anything we need to train cops more to deal with these situations appropriately and pay them more to prevent departments from being forced to hire dip shits.
Which is a better way to deescalate a mental health crisis:
Someone trained in mental health interventions for people in crisis and a cop show up to a mental health crises in an unmarked car. the mental health worker, dressed like a civilian, engages the person and attempts to defuse and deescalate the situation using tactics they have trained years using. The cop hangs back closely monitoring the situation if it turns violent, or if the mental health worker calls in for help. At any point the cop has the authority to deem the situation too dangerous and can take over point/call in backup.
Two uniformed cops show up in a squad car with lights and sirens. Both hop out, hands near their service weapons and proceed to start shouting orders at the person. They attempt to draw on the brief mental health training from a year ago when engaging the person, but are clumsy and out of their depth.
CAHOOTS in Eugene, OR is a pretty decent example of mental crisis response teams that seems to work well.
FWIW, i think it is a huge problem that there is such a discrepancy between how much power cops wield vs how low the bar is to become one… and that is, IMO, in large part due to the low pay.
First time that social worker is killed, that plan gets scrapped. Probably happen the first week somewhere.
That funding should be independent of police funding and not come from police funding.
The problem with taking police funds and giving it to social programs that will reduce crime is that it will take time to see the benefits, assuming they will work, so in the meantime you still need a full strength police force. If you weaken the force, there will be a spike in crime which in turn will make it harder on the programs to be effective, and they will ask for more money. This assumes the programs will even work which, given the effectiveness of what we already have, is doubtful. Unfortunately, these social programs don’t need to prove their effectiveness before getting money.
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