Sorry it took so long for me to get back to this thread.

Short form, as government takes over the clinical side and reduces both the pay and the options for treatment, there is no incentive to develop new drugs and treatments. All new treatments are always more expensive at first. As the Death Panels [call them what they will be] look at things, letting people die is the cheapest alternative unless they are connected to the regime or are profitable to individual politicians.

With no demand, no researchers.

Our family has had experience with government health care in Britain. My daughter saw two deliberate murders of geriatric patients by medical staff that were SOP. And that is before the “Liverpool Path”. Active euthanasia of the elderly and the chronically ill is the end state of healthcare controlled by the government, especially if it is a one-party polity.

Subotai Bahadur

I agree with so much of your basic assessment. We are governed by a Facist elite. They and their allies have created and encouraged the corruption which is rotting out the foundations of the country, but they have been able to do this as a result of the decline of civic virtue among the people. The government has encouraged this decay through the welfare state and benefited from it through increased power to turn more citizens into dependents.

You seem to be arguing that we suffer from too little democracy;I would suggest we suffer from too much. It is the height of stupidity to put responsibility for electing our leaders in the hands of people who are unable or unwilling to be responsible for themselves.

Your point that it is a mistake to criticize democracy may well be accurate but like Alexander Hamilton, I think it true that “Your people, sir, are a great beast. They seldom do or choose right.” The simple truth is that the leaders who are destroying the country are elected by the uninformed and the bought. Their allies in corpoate America and the NGOs only benefit from the corruption because they can buy and sell the DC corruptocrats.

While, I hope the ship of state might be righted, I do not believe its course will be changed – except to make things worse.

Yes democracies usually ruin themselves, and were quite likely to ruin us eventually.

But we are ruined, ruined by pervasive corruption, not democracy.

But we are ruled by a mob – but a Mafia not the people – and they govern. Not the people.

We don’t have democracy, we have elections – it’s not the same.

And here they are supremely vulnerable.

And it’s that you attack. In the name of the people and any future, anywhere. What far corner of earth for those who would run to you plan to hide in?

For if this vastly powerful nation falls further into the grips of a utterly corrupt Progressive fascism – their *actual* political economy – that has pretenses of social democracy [HAH!!] what then shall be done not just to us, but to the world in our name, using our nation as the tremendous force for conquest that it can be? For it has long been – and lo all our enemies are they not vanquished? Vanished? As are our friends? Our Mother Country England?

Of course they wish us disarmed. We are the last obstacle before them, and for decades the chief target of their designs. And their boundless hate. Need I lay them out and tick off the fruition of their endless lists when all are aware? Do they even bother to conceal their contempt and animus any longer?

You are correct, the Great Questions of our Times are what now? And what next? And who decides?

It’s usually better to attack weakness, not strength. The Greeks met their foes at sea – where they were in their natural element – and at a narrow mountain pass.

MAJ Lee you just politically drew up against vaster forces on an open plain where they can use their cavalry. Ahem.

Good Heavens man they’ve got little enough morally going for them, don’t rally their troops.

“The real question is what will follow the current mob rule under the corruptocrats?”

Our government has those vices of democracy which were probably going to ruin us. But they didnt. That is not where we are or what has ruined us. Our government is a corrupt criminal enterprise executing a control fraud in full controlling partnership with most definitely un-elected partners in the Financial sector. I include the Federal Reserve. The Control Fraud and our actual governance is utterly extractive and predatory to the tune of Trillions per year.

As we are actually governed: explain how the Federal Reserve is not part of the government, and what is the demarcation between Wall Street and Washington? Mind you the corruption is centered in Washington, but it ceased to be the Peoples choice in all but name decades ago. Where is the precious democracy that controls the Federal Reserve for instance?

We are governed by a Mafia executing a control fraud, that happens to hold empty elections as cover and diversion. We decide nothing of consequence.

You cannot attack democracy and have right on your side.

You can however attack what we have.

He had me at soothing Grimaesque tones…

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/01/open-letter-to-ron-paul-supporters-part.html

Resistance is only “wrong” if you lose. If the Confederacy had made its bid for independence a success, historians would view it differently.

Resistance, however, might never become necessary if the federal government continues on its current course. The behemoth could collapse of its own inbred inconsistencies and unsustainability. The aftermath would probably be bloody and unpleasant, but the restoration of the states or even the people to their original sovereignty would probably be worth it.

I’ m not sure that we disagree for the most part. It is indisputable that the size of American political participation increased dramatically between 1828 and 1840 – the Age of Jackson – and continued to expand through the 1920s. It is also true that following the election of FDR, American politics increasingly became dominated by special interest, single issue political groups which alienated large numbers of the electorate. The expansion of protected dependent classes have further degraded the integrity of the political process as the Democrats often have succeeded in herding these dregs to the polls to vote in favor of extorting greater and greater wealth from producers to feed the insatiable maw of those who will not take responsibility for their own needs or wants. The intrusion of the government into ever expanding areas of citizens’ rights in a futile pursuit of filling unlimited demands for more and more with diminishing resources from fewer and fewer, led to the expansion of a necessary but counterproductive bureaucracy. BUT,the voters elect the people who surrender control to “civil servants.” So, we are a mass democracy in that any citizen (and some who aren’t) who wishes to vote may do so. This system of mobocracy is fatally flawed and doomed to failure. The real question is what will follow the current mob rule under the corruptocrats?

Once that option is gone or negligible, salaries will fall and everybody who goes into medical research knows it. Right now, there is a viable option in molecular biology as Craig Venter is paying very high salaries to distinguished researchers from all over the world. Frankly, if I were doing it again, I would think very hard about molecular biology and genetic engineering. Venter is a billionaire and some of his recruited associates are driving Ferraris. Plus the weather at UC San Diego is very nice.

I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with one of my students who is interested in a research career in pediatric neurology. I advised her, and sent her some references, about autism research as I think that will be fruitful in the next 25 years. There are very interesting areas now and the clinical option may be ending. I would expect that Geriatrics will diminish as a career choice in spite of the growth in the elderly population because clinical choices in treatment will be severely restricted by the IPAB. The red pill, for example, instead of a pacemaker.

[I increased the number of links that triggers moderation. J]

If a trial occurs and the government is not denounced for acting unconstitutionally and for having at best a sham democracy, whose election results are not respected by either party, then MOLON LABE all you want, to the extent they do they will do so from a position of legitmacy and their opponents illegitimate.

Many Historians now acknowledge that the democratic governance period of the United States ran from Andrew Jackson and ended with FDR. We now are in what one called the Populist/Bureaucratic phase of governing. How populist it is is very arguable. It’s popular amongst those it pays.

We are governed by a bureaucracy that holds elections and does as it pleases. It is supported by a cartel of Wall Street, Federal Reserve and it’s various Academies, NGOs, and media shapers of opinion. This is not democratic or Constitutional Government. It’s relationship to the Constitution is *Constitutional Law* taught by such as Louis Seidman to our esteemed President, that’s not the same as the Constitution. For instance to Constitutionally seize our arms requires a repeal of the 2d Amendment. I do not think that will happen [nor do I think they will successfully seize the arms].

democracy? You mean acknowledging that the entire House of Representatives stood for elections and remains with the [hapless] Republicans?

Did they acknowledge the enormous NO on the Wall Street bailout?

Did anything change as a result of the 2010 elections?

**The votes don’t count you see.**

We shan’t begin to list the violations of the Constitution – that is many blogs in itself. The lack of a budget and that the Executive governs and spends in contempt of the Legislative is most glaring at present.

You cannot grant them either cover of the Constitution or Heaven Help us “democracy”. **The votes don’t count you see.** But if it’s granted they do… in a trial that would place any resistance in the position of those who fired on Sumpter – in the wrong.

[this is moving past the academic]

Understand the issues with practicing at this point, but why is research so problematic?

Young doctors are worrying, and pondering their choices. The woman who barely beat out one of my daughters for high school valedictorian [they have been friends since third grade] ended up being offered full rides at MIT, CalTech, Rennslauer (sp?), and Colorado School of Mines. She went to MIT, got her degree in Biochemistry, in the immediate post 9/11 period, she went to work for the government for a few years, and got her Masters paid for from that. Then she went to med school. Now interning, and wondering if all the effort was wasted and she should have done something else with her life. She is not as in debt as most, but medicine [either practicing or research which is where she is aiming] is beginning to look like a bad career choice. Don’t know what she will decide; but I suspect that those who aren’t as far along in the process may reconsider.

I haven’t talked to my students about this as I don’t want to be the harbinger of coming bad times. One hopeful fact is the coming shortage of doctors. They will be replaced with nurses and “lesser licensed providers” but there will still be a job for young doctors. I do worry about their student loans. I don’t know how they will repay them unless somebody gets wisdom and proposes a loan forgiveness program in return for service in some low income health service. I encourage students to think about the military, which will pay for medical school in return for an obligation. I think that is a good deal but college kids tend to be anti-military.

The 2014 elections will be huge as we find out if the re-election was a function of the machine, which out organized the GOP, or if the country really has changed. By then more of Obamacare will be apparent and we may even see some results of the new Obama foreign policy.

Politics lately has gotten me in a funk – not just for the recent events but the realization that it is varied monied interests that seem to get the legislation they want.

Pick your party – left or right.

2 things that have come to me via the Net in recent hours – I have a new “old” car – a 1996 MB – and it had a gas leak. Gas is dripping out the back – and fortunately I learn that it is just a couple of small rubber fuel hoses that have had pin hole leaks for quite some time. And I learn, caused by the ethanol-blended gas forced on us by the corn lobby. Currently it is 10% and the Feds want to ram through 15% – with the manufacturers saying it will void their warranties.

Then I am mentioning on a thread somewhere else that the more the Federal government intervenes in the medical field, the more expensive – and less efficient – it becomes . I mentioned getting a minor operation a few years ago and a nurse telling me she spends half her time on the keyboard – all – it seems, mandated by the govt.

And pushed by companies with the software to sell.

Sgt Mom – the only thing you left out on Pengun – which seems to be accurate what you wrote (as much as any of us can tell from his lair somewhere in the forests of BC playing with the bears – – balding old hippy with a pony tail ;-)

The resilient, American vision trusts the open marketplace; we can see how it has been distorted by crony capitalism, crony news services, bribery, coercion and an education system that argues against rather than for American exceptionaism (hell, the facts lead to a belief in that very exceptionalism). That challenge to our sense of the innate common sense and virtue of the American people is disturbing. We know that state-control encourages vice and mediocrity, that it doesn’t challenge us to become what we can be but enables us to be our worst. That others can’t see that is not surprising to us, that the majority doesn’t is disturbing.

American culture didn’t listen to Solzhenitsyn and the other canaries in a world of coal mines. We’ve walked on, into the dark. But we are a democracy, we can’t say “they” the way so many other hapless citizens of other countries, ones that had never known democracy, might. It is we. Even if the “we” of flyover territory know better and perform better, we are a party to it, if only through passivity.

Rebut him or ignore him, but I suggest you not waste time on him as a topic of conversation.

Hi ho, at least you understand.

The admin at the site finally figured out he wasn’t french at all, after several of the commenters pointed out his repeated errors when he attempted to use french in his comments, and the rest of us simply agreed to ignore him as a worthless waste of time whenever he tried to drop a turd in the punch bowl.

After a few weeks of being a non-entity, he went away.

I would suggest the same policy in regard to the horse’s patoot who drops his apples here on nearly every thread.

His comments consist of insults and unsupported assertions. There’s nothing there, so why bother?

I’m not one making threats, well innuendo really. You have threatened to ignore me many times you know.