After Williams's firing, NPR fears financial backlash

Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 23, 2010
NPR faced fierce public and political reaction - most of it strongly negative - in the wake of its firing of commentator Juan Williams for comments he made on a Fox News program earlier in the week."

Feds Death Panels Moving Forward

Written by CA Political News on October 23, 2010, 01:43 PM

Feds Deciding When Healthcare Science Costs Too Much To Save Lives
-By Warner Todd Huston, Publius Forum, 10/22/10  
If anyone wants a current example of what is looming ahead for medical science at the hands of Obamacare, the Avastin controversy is a perfect one. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to de-list the cancer drug Avastin one reason being that it is a drug too expensive for government to fund. It is scary to think that the federal government can summarily dismiss cancer drugs merely because of expense, but that is what happens when government starts counting the beans. It becomes an issue of cost instead of effectiveness.
There were other reasons that the FDA wants to dump Avastin, but cost was one of them. One of those that sat in judgment of Avastin admitted that cost was a factor in the decision to delegitimize the treatment. Natalie Compagni Portis, a member of one of the panels that the FDA convened to investigate the drug, said, “We aren’t supposed to talk about cost, but that’s another issue.”
In some cases it costs as much as $88,000 annually for an Avastin breast cancer regimen, certainly not a cheap deal. But who is the government to decide that a lifesaving (or life extending or life changing) drug is too expensive for us to be allowed to use?
Imagine what this might mean for future experimental drug treatments? How many drug companies will continue pursuing new treatments when they begin to see the expense involved? How many promising drugs will be abandoned as companies become fearful that the costs of development will never be returned in sales because of government proscriptions?
Let’s put it in different terms. Remember when flat screen TVs first came out? They often cost over $20,000 a set. Certainly only the very rich could afford such a ridiculously extravagant price for a mere television, right? But as more people clamored for them companies began to experiment on production techniques and the technology began to come down in price. More people bought flat screens when prices fell to $10,000, then $5,000, then $2,000 per set. Thanks to the profit motive more and more customers could finally afford flat screen TVs until today that is practically all you can buy, often they are under $1,000.
Now, imagine where our TV technology would be if the federal government stepped in and summarily decided that $20,000 was too much for a TV and prevented companies from selling products that were initially so highly priced? TV manufacturers would have instantly ceased experimenting and manufacturing the over priced products, prices would never have come down through competition and innovation, and today few people would have the benefit of a flat screen TV.
This example may seem trivial, but the drug manufacturing industry is not that much different than the example above. The fact is drug companies are companies first and foremost. They manufacture products for sale. They aren’t charities. And if these companies see no profit at all in the effort they will not bother pursuing it. That is simply a fact of life.
That fact of life, that quashing of the entrepreneurial spirit, the destruction of the profit motive, all at the hands of government, will also quash new drugs that might bring lifesaving cures in the future. Avastin is one example of the heavy hand of government putting us all at risk.

Issa: Thank You George Soros

Issa: Thank You George Soros: "

WASHINGTON D.C. – Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the Ranking Member on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released the following statement today thanking George Soros for his generous $1.8 million endowment to National Public Radio (NPR) and demonstrating why NPR no longer needs to receive or be eligible to apply for taxpayer dollars:

With NPR benefiting from the generosity of people like MoveOn.org financier George Soros, it’s obvious that NPR is now a self-sustaining entity that no longer needs to rely on federal funds. As an independent entity, they will be free to serve Mr. Soros’ far left agenda. Once NPR is free from the umbrella of accepting, receiving and being eligible for taxpayer dollars, maybe Soros can fully finance NPR’s fall schedule with spin-offs of some of America’s favorite shows such as, ‘Dancing with the Czars’ or ‘Socialist Survivor’ and ‘Lost: The Obama Presidency.’

"

Merkel says German multi-cultural society has failed

• by Audrey Kauffmann | October 16, 2010

Angela Merkel says multi-culturalism has not worked in Germany

Germany's attempt to create a multi-cultural society has failed completely, Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the weekend, calling on the country's immigrants to learn German and adopt Christian values.
Merkel weighed in for the first time in a blistering debate sparked by a central bank board member saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants.
"Multikulti", the concept that "we are now living side by side and are happy about it," does not work, Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam near Berlin.
"This approach has failed, totally," she said, adding that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values.
"We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here," said the chancellor.
"Subsidizing immigrants" isn't sufficient, Germany has the right to "make demands" on them, she added, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning practices such as forced marriages.
Merkel spoke a week after talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which they pledged to do more to improve the often poor integration record of Germany's 2.5-million-strong Turkish community.
Turkish President Abdullah Gul, in a weekend interview, also urged the Turkish community living in Germany to master the language of their adopted country.
"When one doesn't speak the language of the country in which one lives that doesn't serve anyone, neither the person concerned, the country, nor the society," the Turkish president told the Suedeutsche Zeitung.
"That is why I tell them at every opportunity that they should learn German, and speak it fluently and without an accent. That should start at nurseries."
German President Christian Wulff was due for a five-day visit to Turkey and talks with the country's leaders on Monday.
The immigration debate has at times threatened to split Merkel's conservative party, and she made noises to both wings of the debate.
While saying that the government needed to encourage the training of Muslim clerics in Germany, Merkel said "Islam is part of Germany", echoing the recent comments of Wulff, a liberal voice in the party.
Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, CSU, who represents the right-wing, recently said Germany did not "need more immigrants from different cultures like the Turks and Arabs" who are "more difficult" to integrate.
While warning against "immigration that weighs down on our social system", Merkel said Germany needed specialists from overseas to keep the pace of its economic development.
According to the head of the German chamber of commerce and industry, Hans Heinrich Driftmann, Germany is in urgent need of about 400,000 engineers and qualified workers, whose lack is knocking about one percent off the country's growth rate.
The integration of Muslims has been a hot button issue since August when a member of Germany's central bank sparked outrage by saying the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim migrants with headscarves.
The banker, Thilo Sarrazin, has since resigned but his book on the subject -- "Germany Does Itself In" -- has flown off the shelves, and polls showed considerable sympathy for some of his views.
A recent study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think tank showed around one-third of Germans feel the country is being "over-run by foreigners" and the same percentage feel foreigners should be sent home when jobs are scarce.
Nearly 60 percent of the 2,411 people polled thought the around four million Muslims in Germany should have their religious practices "significantly curbed."
Far-right attitudes are found not only at the extremes of German society, but "to a worrying degree at the centre of society," the think tank said in its report.
"Hardly eight weeks have passed since publication of Sarrazin's theory of decline, and the longer the debate continues to a lower level it falls," the weekly Der Spiegel commented Sunday.
AFP