In Defense of an Election Defeat

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Ex-Congressman Dan Lipinski (D, IL) lost his State’s primary election largely—almost entirely—because of his pro-life position on abortion.  He wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal explaining how that loss came about:

I faced it [the question of whether he should have changed his abortion stance to win the primary] head-on in my statement. I defended my pro-life position, which is rooted in both my Catholic faith and science. “I could never give up protecting the most vulnerable human beings in the world, simply to win an election,” I said. “My faith teaches, and the Democratic Party preaches, that we should serve everyone, especially the most vulnerable. …”

Then he closed his piece with this:

[P]arty leaders and presidential candidates refuse to tolerate anyone who doesn’t support abortion on demand at any time, paid for by taxpayers.
The Democratic Party asserts that its highest priority right now is to defeat President Trump. The party’s treatment of pro-life voters belies that claim.

Party’s treatment of Party non-believers doesn’t belie the claim so much as it makes the claim harder to satisfy. After all, babies don’t vote, but pro-life citizens of all political bent do.

Kudos to this rare Democrat who put integrity and honor and respect for life above winning an election.

FDA’s Drug Approvals

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Charles Hooper and David Henderson are on the right track.

The Federal government requires pharmaceutical companies to prove that their drugs are both safe and effective before putting them on the market. Before 1962, companies needed to prove only safety. While there is some appeal to this two-hurdle approach, evidence suggests that there is only a slight benefit and a tremendous cost. With the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the world, there has never been a better time to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s efficacy requirement.

I suggest the FDA move to a two-stage approval process. The first stage should focus on safety: does the drug do no harm, at least compared with the condition it’s aimed at treating (because all drugs have side effects).  Once it’s determined the drug is safe, it should be released to the market, limited strictly to on-label use. Let prescribing doctors and patients determine whether the drug is useful, let market forces do their trick. The FDA’s imprimatur for this stage, should be limited to “safe as prescribed, not determined to be effective.”

The second stage should proceed without delay, overlapping the first stage to the extent feasible; in this stage, investigative focus should be on efficacy—does the drug actually have the effect on its target condition that’s intended. Only after the trials associated with this stage have been successfully completed could the drug receive its full-up FDA stamp of approval—and authorization for use, under prescription, off-label.

This modification to the pre-1962 requirement would cheapen development, and it would provide more drugs of greater utility faster to market and to the doctors and patients who use them.

Joe Biden’s…Politics

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Karl Rove had a piece in The Wall Street Journal, and he had this comment about the situation in which Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden finds himself:

Mr Biden must also decide soon whether to keep moving left or emphasize that he’s a more centrist [Progressive-]Democrat. Picking the first course would suggest that he believes victory this fall depends on mobilizing Senator Bernie Sanders’s [I,VT] backers by agreeing with many of the Vermonter’s views.
Picking the second would indicate that he thinks the key to victory lies with suburbanites who swung to Democrats in 2018, and that he’ll get the Bernie vote by being the alternative to Mr Trump, not the instrument to enact a socialist agenda.
But Mr Biden may already have moved too far left for some suburbanites….

Biden can’t tack back in the more-or-less general direction of the center (whether Party’s center, or America’s); to do so would utterly destroy his credibility. Both Party’s left and those suburbanites would see the move as blowing with the political-convenience winds inconstancy.

And so would the American electorate at large.

Biden is stuck.

America’s Olympic Sports Organizations are Losing Money?

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In spades, according to the US Olympic & Paralympic Committee:

…America’s amateur sports organizations stand to lose as much as $800 million from coronavirus-driven cancellations, including the postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Games until next year.

Color me unsympathetic. At least not until after the various civil and criminal cases over the women and girl athlete sexual and child abuses so rampant in our sports scamps—especially our Olympic and Olympic-prep camps—have finished their trek through our courts, and convicted miscreants are paying their compensatory damages and/or are serving their times in jail.

The USOCP appears to not be taking those miscreancies seriously, even today:

USA Gymnastics [a major abuser of girl and women athletes] is facing decertification from the USOPC….

Still. Four years later. The excuse being blatted about is that USA Gymnastics is in bankruptcy proceedings as it faces hundreds of lawsuits over Nassar. Nonsense. Decertification need have no impact on USAG’s bankruptcy. USOCP looks like it’s dithering.

Not a penny for these organizations, of which USAG and USOCP are only a couple of the larger ones. American taxpayer money needs to be focused on medical support and economic recovery.

Of course the matter remains before the Progressive-Democratic Party majority House: they still could get all that cash.

It Depends

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are stewing about the Wuhan Virus relief bill that just passed the Senate. To an extent, the WSJ is justified in its concern; $2 trillion isn’t chump change (the editorial was written before the Senate voted the bill up, so details at the link might differ from Senate-passed reality). Couple things about the paper’s concern, though.

The bill includes $250 billion for $1,200 payments to Americans whether or not they’re affected by the virus. The cash will do little or nothing to help an economy closed by government fiat.

All Americans have been, and remain, economically affected by the virus and the government-mandated shutdown of our economy; the $1,200 isn’t for medical treatment. The rub here is whether the money arrives in individuals’ pocketbooks soon enough to do them any good in the immediate exigency. The Senate version of the bill (the Progressive-Democrat House won’t take the bill until today, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) is making noises like she’s in no hurry, and she still has roadblocks to throw down) promises the money as soon as possible, but in any case, no later than 31 December.

Assuming the money arrives soon enough, the editors’ concern about helping the economy seems overstated. Whether the money does anything for “an economy closed by government fiat” depends on the duration of the fiat. President Donald Trump has set an aspirational goal of “open by Easter,” but realization or further delay will depend on the medical facts extant at the time—facts that, contrary to journalistic and Party rhetorical implications, are constantly updated and considered.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi managed to earmark $25 million for, er, virus relief for Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

That is pork, and it’s a harbinger of the roadblocks to come now that the bill is in Pelosi’s House. On the one hand, though, no less a light than Congressman Jerry Nadler (D, NY) has identified the center as symbolic of New York City and so, of course, a Critical Item. On another hand, those $25 million are 0.00125% of the total bill; if Pelosi and Nadler really will rent themselves so cheaply, it’s not a deal worth blowing up national relief for. Thursday night hookers might be, relatively, more expensive.

Finally,

Journalists will need weeks to cull through the pages and figure out what it all really means.

So will honest Americans and our businessmen. [/snark]