Life vs. Profits

 

To get the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) passed in 2010, even a Democrat-controlled Congress required a whole lot of compromises and concessions to the profit-driven private sector. Private insurance companies pushed aside a potential government-supplied, ultra-low-cost competitor, and the pharmaceutical industry – pretending to be concerned about lax quality control (in Canada and Europe???) of non-US prescription drugs – managed to relegate approved prescription drugs to those sold in the United States (where the same drugs are sold at prices vastly higher than those found overseas).

There’s no question that developing new pharmaceuticals is expensive and risky, but large foreign pharmas (particularly in Europe) seem to be able to ply their trade, develop extraordinary new treatments and cures, but retain their rather substantial cost advantages nonetheless. But as long as American pharmas can get Congress to protect their rather extraordinary pricing practices, why should they change? And if a little lobbying and campaign support is required, it is a small price to pay for the profitable result.

Yet our pharmaceutical sector is terrified that a popular uprising, a sudden focus by US consumers on how much more they are paying for their prescriptions than almost anyone in any other developed country, could bring national attention to these expensive practices. You can see this sensitivity by looking at how the stock market reacted recently when a Congressional inquiry drilled down on a new potential cure for the often fatal Hepatitis C. A 12-week curative course would cost a patient a whopping $84,000. But is that a fair or excessive price for such a dramatic treatment?

“A new drug to treat hepatitis C that costs $1,000 a pill has caused rising concern among insurers and state Medicaid programs. It has now also spurred interest from Democratic congressmen whose queries about the drug prompted a sell-off in biotechnology stocks on Friday.

 “Three Democratic members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee have demanded that Gilead Sciences, the developer, justify the price of its drug, which is called Sovaldi… ‘Our concern is that a treatment will not cure patients if they cannot afford it,’ the congressmen said in their letter, which was sent on [March 20th].

“Gilead’s stock fell 4.6 percent, to $72.07 on [March 21st]. Nervous investors took down the shares of some other big biotechnology companies as well, worried that pressure on drug prices would increase. Biogen Idec and Alexion Pharmaceuticals both fell 8 percent, Vertex Pharmaceuticals 5 percent and Celgene nearly 4 percent… ‘The fear that Congress may begin a program of meddling, one drug at a time, doesn’t affect just one drug,’ said Andrew A. Bogan of Bogan Associates, which invests in science and technology stocks. ‘It kind of scares everyone.” New York Times, March 21st.

Sorry, but such an investigation doesn’t really scare me. Yet there have always been forces on both sides of the aisle – beneficiaries of pharma’s political support – who are being pressed into an uncomfortable corner. GOP conservatives, arguing a jingoistic “buy American” in a free market, are going to have to make their stand under the harsh reality of truth: it’s not a free market if Americans are denied access to most of it!

Medical costs are continuing to rise, because it appears that preserving private profits has a much higher national priority than containing healthcare costs or saving lives. And since there is little or no hope of getting reform through a House of Representatives that has tried 54 times to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act but truly has no interest in supporting the obvious required fixes to a statute they just hate, what exactly do we expect will change?

Every other piece of seminal legislation (from Social Security and Medicare to the entire federal tax code) has passed through a process of continuing legislative refinement to correct unanticipated flaws and unforeseen and undesirable results. Not so the Affordable Care Act. Our American right wing wants the Act to look bad, to fail, and doing what Congress has done on every other social legislation at this level through our history, fixing the law through amendment, is simply not on the table this time. This law appears to be the basis of the big battle expected in the upcoming mid-term elections. And the GOP wants that bill to look bad, without the slightest concern of what is really best for America. Why are polarization and gridlock the new badges of honor in our Congress these days?

I’m Peter Dekom, and are we, as Americans, ever going to have a nation where most of us are on the same page?

Patently Obvious Trolls

We live in a world where a “proprietary technology” that resembles pushing an elevator button – Amazon’s one-click online purchase system – has received a judicial affirmation as a viable patent. We watch as Apple and Samsung battle over the viability of design and applicable patents in the tablet/smart phone space. The world is witnessing the almost impossible task for a software designer to avoid the possibility of stepping on someone else’s underlying software patents. Even finding what those underlying patents might be is at best an expensive, and at worst an almost impossible task. As a result, for example, New Zealand’s legal system is moving out of the software patent universe. Given that our constitution enabled patents and copyrights in order to encourage creativity, we need to be very skeptical of any legal construct that stifles creativity with little or no overriding benefit to society as a whole.

In a parallel set of developments, reflecting macro-trends in each branch of the federal government, is a new focus on modifying or stopping so-called patent trolls – individuals and companies that buy up core patents in one or more categories with the primary goal of forcing people and firms that may have inadvertently stepped on those patents to pay very significant funds for such infringements. Such trolls are centered on making claims and litigating rather than in actually using the patents they have acquire to create and manufacture.

“The nation’s legal dockets are littered with patent case with varying degrees of merit, challenging everything from mobile phone push notifications and podcasting to online payment methods and public Wi-Fi. Some 2,600 companies were targeted in new patent lawsuits last year alone.

“Against that backdrop, Obama issued five executive orders on patent reform last summer. Among other things, they require the Patent and Trademark Office to stop issuing overly broad patents, and to force patent applicants to provide more details on what invention they are claiming. One of the orders opens up patent applications for public scrutiny — crowdsourcing — while they are in the approval stage, to help examiners locate prior art and assist with analyzing patent claims.

Since a patent is binding for 20 years, the impact of the new rules won’t be felt for some time. But they will be felt, says [Joe Gratz, a San Francisco-based patent lawyer who is representing Twitter in a patent dispute], a litigator who defends technology-heavy patent lawsuits. ‘The supply of overly broad, vague patents will start to dry up as new rules get put into place,’ he says… In January, Obama became the first president to elevate patent reform to a national meat-and-potatoes issue, when he used the State of the Union address to urge Congress to ‘pass a patent reform bill that allows our businesses to stay focused on innovation, not costly and needless litigation.’” Washington Post, March 20^th.

So-called “business method” patents were born in our courts, have exploded into our business world and given validity for often exceptionally minimal levels of invention. Patent trolls love these new “proprietary rights.” “Let’s let pushing a button to do something in the tangible world have patent value when that technology is now used to do something online.” Huh? But even as the executive branch of government is recognizing the issue, even our gridlocked Congress and our snail-paced judicial system are now drilling down on the underlying issues.

“The House passed major patent reform legislation last year, on a 325-91 vote, in a bid to even out the litigation playing field. Among other things, the Innovation Act requires plaintiffs in lawsuits to be more specific about what they believe is being infringed, and to identify the people who have financial interests behind a company. Perhaps most significantly, it requires that plaintiffs pay litigation expenses if they lose at trial.

“The bill also prohibits patent holders from suing mere users of a technology that allegedly infringes on an invention, like restaurants offering Wi-Fi access to their diners…The Senate is debating similar legislation in a piecemeal manner. Whatever it finally approves, the package will have to go back to the House for final approval before landing on the president’s desk.

“And the Supreme Court is mulling a case on whether patent trolls should pay legal fees to the other side if they lose in court and is even considering the hot-button issue of whether software — often at the center of modern patent disputes — is even patentable.” The Post. If we are to be a nation that builds increasing levels of technology as our primary growth and job-driver, we need to shift the balance of legal protection for minimal contributions to society towards a system that actually encourages real invention and creativity.

I’m Peter Dekom, and patent reform is only one part of redefining our society to maximize values for our country as a whole.

A Digital Coup

All powerful Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is currently under a cloud of suspicion with allegations of possible corruption. Social media have been blasting away, albeit most folks who routinely access online social media are not his conservative constituency, the latter being mostly those with traditional Islamic if not Islamist leanings. It’s the younger, more sophisticated crowds, folks who have demonstrated heavily against his iron hand, who have been using this aggregation of social criticism to point out unpleasant evidence of wrongdoing. Enlisting his conservative courts in his fight to contain the spread of his purported misdeeds, Mr. Erdogan has escalated his battle by shutting Twitter out of Turkey.

“Erdogan was scathing about the service on [March 20^th]. ‘We will wipe out all of these,’ he said. ‘The international community can say this, can say that. I don't care at all. Everyone will see how powerful the Republic of Turkey is.’” Reuters, March 21^st. Whoa, dude, that little recording, which you deny was you talking to your son about how to stash large sums of money, has already flown all over the web. And if you really think you have the slightest ability to shut down social media short of becoming North Korea, think again.

“Tech-savvy Turks - President Abdullah Gul [oddly in the same political party as Erdogan] apparently among them - quickly found ways to circumvent the ban, with the hashtag #TwitterisblockedinTurkey among the top trending globally on [March 21^st]… ‘One cannot approve of the complete closure of social media platforms,’ Gul tweeted, voicing his hope that the ban would be short-lived and setting himself publicly at odds with the prime minister.” Reuters.

“The minute the Turkish prime minister announced the block on the service, many users were finding - and sharing - ways around the ban… With Turkish internet providers ordered to send Twitter traffic to a dead end, computer users found they could change the Domain Name Settings (DNS), which form the internet's address book, to get back on the right track.

“Those using mobile phones to tweet were advised to download Virtual Private Network applications of the kind used by web users in countries such as China to access blocked sites… And Twitter itself sent out advice, suggesting that users revert to an old method [SMS], which allows them to post updates to their account via text message.” BBC.co.uk, March 21^st.

At a time when many in Turkey cry for a more modern movement back towards the European Union (a tiny part of Turkey is actually in Europe), the traditional Islamist factions, represented by Erdogan, are pushing in the opposite direction. “In Turkey, the government holds most power but the president can veto laws, appoint officials, and name judges... The European Union said it was worried about the move to block Twitter, with Stefan Fuele, the EU commissioner for enlargement, saying he was ‘gravely concerned’ by Prime Minister Erdogan's policy on free speech… European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes described the blocking of the site as 'groundless, pointless, cowardly.'... Turkey's lawyers' association asked a court to overturn the ban, arguing it was unconstitutional and violated Turkish and European human rights laws. Turkey's main opposition party also said it would try to have the decision reversed.” BBC.

What is it with Islamic leaders and banning social media? “Erdogan's attempt to stifle social media isn't working, and may even be inflaming the opposition… This is hardly the first time a government has responded to a crisis by cracking down on the Internet. Tunisia's Zine El Abedine Ben Ali tried it and later got overthrown. Same goes for former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. In Syria, the violence has only worsened since President Bashar al-Assad's attempt to smother the Web.

“How do these leaders keep making the same mistakes? Don't they learn? ... It shouldn't surprise us that these leaders have more in common than just an affinity for dropping the hammer on the Web. Many are also isolated, says Steven Cook, a Middle East scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations who met with Erdogan last April.

“Erdogan ‘is surrounded by young people who are quite afraid of the prime minister and not willing to fill him in on what's going on,’ said Cook. ‘These are yes-men — the people he takes counsel from are a very small group of people.’… ‘As a Turkish Islamist, he has reason to be paranoid,’ [Zeynep Tufekci, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina who follows Turkey closely] said. ‘There is a long history of the old elite of the secular state repressing pious Muslims. He sees it as similar to that — even though he accuses a Muslim cleric’ of stirring up trouble.

“If Erdogan is convinced that he's the victim, and sees enemies everywhere, shutting down their ability to associate might seem like a perfectly rational move — at least in the moment. It's an age-old move out of the dictators' playbook: Control the flow of information, and you control the people.” Brian Fung, writing for the Washington Post, March 21^st. And of course, the “wipe out” was anything but effective.

“Nonetheless, the ban appeared to backfire, fomenting a loud and raucous backlash on Twitter, with the hashtags #TwitterisblockedinTurkey, #occupytwitter, #turkeyblockedtwitter, and #dictatorerdogan quickly becoming popular trending topics globally… According to Twitturk, which records the statistics of Turkey’s roughly 12 million Twitter users, more than half a million tweets were posted in just 10 hours, despite the ban. Statista, a New York statistics portal, lists Turkey as the fourth-largest Twitter community in the world after the United States, Britain and Japan.” New York Times, March 21^st. In the end, if recent events are any indicator, Mr. Erdogan may have just accelerated his own demise.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am recalling the laughter in the musical recording of “Wipe Out.”

Weeding Out

As legalization of marijuana phases in and criminalization statutes phase out across many states, it’s time to ask questions about the impact of growing this intoxicating weed on our environment. In the not-so-legal trade which seems to dominate large sections of Northern California, this “agricultural product” is clearly not under the watchful eye of qualified agricultural experts, resulting in some pretty devastating ecological impacts.

First, exactly how big is this “ray of California sunshine”? And since most states still ban demon weed, exactly how does it get into the limited markets where it is legal… as well as the vast majority of markets where it is not? “[W]ith the exception of Colorado and Washington, whose laws dictate where, how, and by whom marijuana may be grown, they have had little to say about the manner in which it is cultivated—which is challenging to dictate in any case, since growers who cooperate with state regulators could still be prosecuted under federal statutes that classify pot as a Schedule 1 drug, the legal equivalent of LSD and heroin. So where is all this legal and semilegal weed supposed to come from? The answer, increasingly, is an unregulated backwoods economy, the scale of which makes Prohibition-era moonshining look quaint…

“According to federal stats, trespass grows [weed farmers who simply grow their crops on state, federal or private land that is not theirs] in California alone account for more than one-third of the cannabis seized nationwide by law enforcement, which means they could well be the largest single source of domestically grown marijuana. Of course, nobody can say precisely how much pot comes from indoor grows and private plots that are less accessible to the authorities. What's clear is that California's marijuana harvest is vast—"likely the largest value crop (by far) in the state's lineup," notes the Field Guide to California Agriculture. Assuming, as the guide does, that the authorities seize about 10 percent of the harvest, that means they would have left behind more than 10 million outdoor plants last year, enough to yield about $31 billion worth of product. That's more than the combined value of the state's top 10 legal farm commodities.” Mother Jones, March/April 2014.

Does inevitable legalization shut this illegal farming community in favor of more traditional private farming on properly-owned land? Exactly where will the future “legal crops” be grown, and exactly what environmental controls are likely to be necessary? Clearly, rogue farming would not expected to care how many laws and regulations they might violate, since the growers are willing to face vastly more devastating criminal prosecution to ply their trade. How bad is it?

“To meet demand, researchers say, the acreage dedicated to marijuana grows in the Emerald Triangle [pictured above] has doubled in the past five years. Like the Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, this ‘green rush,’ as it is known locally, has brought great wealth at a great cost to the environment. Whether grown in bunkers lit with pollution-spewing diesel generators, or doused with restricted pesticides and sown on muddy, deforested slopes that choke off salmon streams during the rainy season, this "pollution pot" isn't exactly high quality, or even a quality high. ‘The cannabis industry right now is in sort of the same position that the meatpacking industry was in before The Jungle was written by Upton Sinclair,’ says Stephen DeAngelo, the founder of Oakland's Harborside Health Center, a large medical marijuana dispensary. ‘It simply isn't regulated, and the upshot is that nobody really knows what's in their cannabis.’” Mother Jones.

In addition to the qualification of sellers, record-keeping and regulatory control of legally-sold marijuana in the retail and wholesale marketplace, as this intoxicant generates increasing legal status in more states, we equally need to address the rather severe consequences of unregulated farming. For those who advocate legal status for the marijuana trade, the issue is not simply about legalization and done; it’s very much an “industry” that requires a lot of pre-planning, regulatory controls, uniform and understandable quality standards and very real limitations and environmental regulations that impact all of us, whether we are users or consumers or not.

I’m Peter Dekom, and whether or not you favor legalization of pot, if such status is achieved, we all need to press hard for the kinds of controls that make this industry accountable.

What Exactly Can We Do?

Once we got over the aftermath of World War II, our foreign policy vectors have swung back and forth; depending on which party were in power, with a stunning lack of consistency, a heavy reliance on political appointees, Congressional showboating and a deep under-reliance on State Department veteran career Foreign Service officers. With an over-linked global communications network, it’s easy for Washington to override decisions in the field, impose political dictates from afar and take away the underlying power of the relevant American diplomatic experts on the ground. And let’s face facts: Americans do not value foreign policy expertise among their elected representatives. Aside from allies Canada and Mexico, oceans and seas separate us from the rest of the world. We lack the historical accumulation of political finesse that has defined Europe for centuries. But then again, Europeans have been living together, check and jowl, for a very long time.

Parallel with this ease of overriding the experts comes the unwillingness of politicos to recognize that the shape of American power is not remotely what it was before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since that date, notwithstanding the recent escalation of aggression from Russia, the world has slid away from reliance on America’s nuclear umbrella, and the new staggering world powers are increasingly being measured based on economic success. Yet the relatively uniform Congressional response to diplomatic initiatives is to build a mega-military force that we are reluctant to use and that has a pretty nasty track record since WWII.

As China’s political model has lifted over a billion people from poverty, growing faster economically than any other large nation, many in the world are quick to point out that the 2008 crash and following mega-recession emanated from countries that followed a more democratic capitalistic model of the United States. With China growing the largest middle class in the world, the United States is presenting a very different face to the world: a contracting middle class, extremely higher concentrations of wealth at the narrow pinnacle of society, and lower classes with very small economic stakes in the country.

It’s the economy stupid! The mantra is simply that people care more about their standard of living – at least until they have achieved what they think is fair – than they do about political freedom. Money seems to trump democracy unless the two can be clearly linked. So when things go wrong with the world, they don’t mind if the US picks up the tab, but the cost is that US intervention often becomes the movement of an insensitive cultural bully that generates more resentment than respect.

So when Russia supports rogue killers in Syria or decides to ignore the treaty it signed guaranteeing Ukrainian sovereignty, what can the United States really do about it? The United Nations is completely useless against Russia’s own roguish acts… a veto from Russia kills the value of that international body. Given the overreliance on Russian oil and gas which defines most of Western Europe, it took the Obama administration to pull sanctions against Russia from a kicking and screaming EU.

Republican foes are challenging Obama’s foreign policy as “feckless,” but do Americans really want to support a military conflict against Russia, a rise in tensions that could easily escalate wildly out of control? Reality check: Russians don’t care about sanctions and are cheering their leader (who has been desperately looking for a distraction from his failed domestic economic policies). Truth is that, short of possibly provoking WWIII, there’s not much we can do to undo the Crimean takeover. We’re going to muddle through strained relations with Russia for some time, and there is little in the way of likely relief. I haven’t heard a single suggestion from anyone on either side of the aisle that would effect sending Crimea back to Ukraine. Lambasting Obama and blaming him for events not remotely within his control is simply meaningless rhetoric that doesn’t really deserve serious response.

But the United States gets equally slammed by her own purported allies. “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on [March 19^th] to protest remarks by Israel's defence minister that portrayed the United States as weak in its handling of nuclear talks with Iran and other world affairs, a State Department spokeswoman said.

“Speaking during a lecture at Tel Aviv University on Monday, Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said Israel could not rely on its main ally to take the lead in confronting Iran over its nuclear program. He also pointed to Ukraine's crisis as an example of Washington "showing weakness…It is the second time this year that Washington has taken issue with tough public criticism from Yaalon, a former armed forces chief and a hawkish member of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party… In January, he described Kerry's quest for Israeli-Palestinian peace as messianic and obsessive.” Reuters, March 19^th.

What exactly would happen if we mounted a preemptive strike on Iran? Would Iran mine the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices through the roof? Release its terrorist cells in the West to wreak havoc with bombs and sabotage against all targets? And would that really stop Iran’s program or entrench them further? Maybe will get there, but what is the answer we give to Iran as to why the US and Israel are justified in having nukes but they are not? No easy answers, as Russian President Putin points to our policies in Kosovo that resulted in the carving out a state from one nation and allowing that land to move elsewhere based on local popular sentiments (touting the will of the Crimean people based on the recent referendum there).

It is awkward and seemingly un-American to believe that our unilateral actions no longer dictate the actions of others. It’s not simply the USA vs. the USSR anymore, and there are factions growing rapidly, from stateless Muslim extremists, to rogue nations and dictatorial incumbents, to world leaders ready to raise their local political capital by taking on the United States of America. We are learning how to operate in this not-so-brave new world, where going it alone is beyond challenging, but we are not learning the relevant lessons fast enough… and we have yet to learn how to get our way when we actually could get our way.

I’m Peter Dekom, and learning to operate in a world of deeply changing pockets of power is one of the most difficult challenges we face.