The pledges of new impeachments are ominous going into the midterm elections, where Democrats appear to be promising more of the same dysfunctional efforts to use this constitutional process for raw partisan advantage. Even with those who oppose Trump Administration policies, it is hard to believe that a majority of Americans want to return to the same chaos of the first term.
163 thoughts on “Impeachment Articles Filed Against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”
Americans enjoy the freedom of obtaining healthcare from free, self-regulated, private doctors and hospitals in the free markets of the private sector.
HHS, the CDC et al. are irrefutably unconstitutional.
Congress has no power to tax for, fund, operate, or regulate any aspect or facet of the healthcare industry to any degree.
Article 1, Section 8: Congress has the power to tax only for debt, defense, and general welfare (i.e. security and basic infrastructure).
Article 1, Section 8, Congress has the power to regulate only “the value of money,” “commerce among nations, states, and Indian tribes,” and “land and naval Forces.”
All these are arguably unconstitutional.
But far more importantly – they are all unarguably a bad idea.
Government is FORCE and if FORCE was an effective way to accomplish everything not just the US but the entire would would still rest on a slave economy.
Government is always the least efficient way to do anything.
Therefore Government should only do those things that can only be done by government.
Those are incredibly important – without them nothing else works. ‘
But there are also very few things that only government can do.
Government should only do those things the Constitution allows it to do.
Read it.
America was designed and intended to be free and free of government to the greatest degree possible.
Everything, with the exception of the few items mentioned in Article 1, Section 8, is to be done by free people operating free enterprises of the free industries in the free markets of the free private sector.
*. Back on earth red dyes in foods were gone ages ago. I’m not eating beef fat nor margarine nor any animal fat. Vaccines are sensitive to temperature and shipping negligence renders them all but useless. I don’t care if RFK is impeached or not.
Meanwhile, there’s a tsunami of narco-states in all of Latin America. Obama used in the US narco state followed by Biden’s phase 2. DJT could hit it hard for 3 years left but it would reinfect as the clown Benny Thompsom questions Noem. His head swivels like a machine.
Do your time…
The upside? That’s evident. When you’ve seen bad you know there’s good.
I do not know if you or RFK jr. are right in your claims.
Nor do I care – each of us must be free to make our own choices – and reap the benefits or costs of those choices.
If RFK jr. is increasing our freedom to make decisions about our own lives – i Fully support that – even though many will use that freedom to make bad choices.
There will be drugs so long as there is a demand for them.
But the ultimate collapse of Narco states is inevitable.
The world is ALWAYS changing. Currently those changes are the likely decline of China and Russia, and much of Europe,
The rise of the US, the Rise of othr pacific rim nations and the rise of the western hemisphere.
Venezuela was once the highest standard of living in the western hemisphere outside the US.
The fall of Maduro and socialism will allow Venezuella to prosper again – that benefits Venezuellans and that benefits all of us.
Mexico too has an incredible future – if it can disempower Cartels.
The problem is NOT drugs, it is the disruption and corruption that Cartels bring.
The world is likely to be quite different in 10 years.
Did anyone thing China would be the 2nd largest economy in the world while Mao was alive ?
Bet that the future will be better than the present – you will never lose.
Kennedy Promised Senators He Would Not Interfere In Scientific Policy
After explicitly promising senators during his confirmation hearing that he would not interfere in scientific policy over which Americans should receive which vaccines, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week fired every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the group of experts who help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention make those evidence-based judgments. Kennedy then appointed new members, including vaccine skeptics, prompting alarm from the broader medical community.
You can not commit perjury with statements about the future – that is absurd.
And you most certainly con not commit perjury by statements about your intentions.
With respect to “scientific policy” – there is no such thing.
Science is the process of discovery. It is not supposed to have anything to do with politics or ideology.
The advisory board you rant about – is just that – it is POLITICAL. It exists to provide ADVICE to politicians.
Advice BTW is predictions about the future effects of current acts. It is not science.
It MIGHT be informed by science – but it is absolutley NOT science.
Regardless scientific policy is an oxymoron – it does not exist.
I would separately note that purported scientists in nearly the same filed made allegedly evidence based advice on COVID – How well did that work out.
The FACT is that Scientists are RARELY better at future predictions than anyone else.
You rant about “evidence based judgements” – How ell did that would with Covid ? How well has that worked with Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming ? Do I need to list the predictions of “scientists” that have all proven egregiously false ?
Regardless the IPCC’s predictions for future warming – and the IPCC is among the most conservative of the Warmist groups of politicized scientists have been 2.5 std dev to warm in their predictions.
Statistically that means they are less accurate than throwing darts blind folded, and that is the least hysterical group of CAGW advocates.
We are 2 and a half decades past “an inconvenient truth” we are a decade past nearly all its predictions. NONE have come true.
These are the predictions of purportedly the best of scientists from 2000.
With respect to Vaccines – fundimentally we are NOT dealing with Science – we are dealing with relatively simple match and statistics.
How many people will be harmed – even die from the vaccine – there is no vaccine in existance that does not cause deaths or other harm.
But some have higher and some have lower rates of death and harms.
Vs. How many people will die or be harmed by the disease being vaccinated against.
The US was declared Measles eradicated in 2000, it was declared Rubella eradicated in 2004.
We do still see rare instances of these diseases – because we have over 1M legal immigrants each year, between 1-4M illegal immigrants and far larger numbers of tourists and other travelers.
We generally require proof of vaccination for people entering the US from places that diseases have NOT been eradicated
Though we have SOME places that you can travel to the US from without a visa for less than 90 days.
Others such as Canada you do not even need a passport to enter the US only some proof of identification.
So long as we do not do a near perfect job of stopping contagious diseases at our borders will will on rare occasions have brief resurgences of those diseases in the US. That is true whether we continue to vaccinate or not.
That said the math over the past 25 years shows that vaccine related deaths/year are over the long run HIGHER than those caused by foreigners entering the US.
There are myriads of diseases that are present int he rest of the world that are extremely uncommon in the US that we do not vaccinate for.
Why ? Because the harm from the vaccine is greater than the harm form the rare incidents in which that disease gets into the US.
When that occurs – as we have seen as a result of 11-20M illegal immigrants who did not have to get visa’s or prove immunity or even have a health inspection before entering the US – we have effective tools to limit the harm – such as Quarantines.
Parents should be allowed to make their own decisions regarding Vaccination.
A tiny number of parents who chose to vaccinate whose children die or are harmed by the vaccine will regret that choice – but most will not.
Conversely the tiny number of children who are not vaccinated who die from these diseases will have parents that regret not vaccinating – but most will not. Regardless, children who are not vaccinated can simply quarantine themselves when there are nearby outbreaks.
the “advice” that should be offered regarding Vaccine policy is NOT advice – it is just math and statistics.
While they are not science – they are tools of science. They are also tools of pretty much everything else.
Regardless if you want to know what the outcomes of different vaccination choices are – your best source would be an actuary – not a scientist.
Because this is math not science.
Sure. Fire the guy that actually cares about our health and is asking questions. All this tells me is that there industries terrified the status quo of their profits is shifting, and a great many people in the DNC are complicit. Guess all the talk of homeopathy on the part of progressives was just more boosheet (and Mrs. Obama literally remade the nutritional pyramid, so eff off, dems). This is past stupid; it is now retard*d. Who is running the poop show on the left? Do these people also eat their own boogers?
Common sense does not exist in those waters. Zip, zilch, nada. And they can take their faux compassion and stick it right up there.
James,
Exactly! Common sense is a trait Democrats seem to have lost. All they have now is hate, rage and fear. Trump and DODGE exposing all that fraud, waste and abuse which was funneled to many Democrat NGOs has them scared the grift is up.
I did think Mrs. Obama idea of “Lets move!” was a good idea. Unfortunately, she did not follow through and it fell flat.
Yes. And I really want to emphasize the fact that Michelle Obama changed the *entire freaking food pyramid* for nutrition, just because. Does anyone think that was just prescience? No, there were dollars involved.
Granted, young, woke progressives were either not even alive then, or at the least, very young. They do not know a time when you could not just go to Whole Foods and buy whatever is equally calorically and processed awful vegan cr*p off the shelf as a bag of chips or a doughnut. Sorry, guys, but the rest of us remember, and we vote. For everything. Things they don’t even know about because they are insulated little tools.
As an *actual* farmer, you are of course well aware of all of this, hermano, at least on this site. To many millennials ‘farming’ pretty much means growing p*t. Good luck eating that to survive.
The core problem is that none of this belongs in government.
Look around – each and everyone of us makes our own choices regarding our health AND how important it is to us.
Some of us are excercise fanatics. Some of us live off of nuts and berries. Some of us still smoke. eat things that are likely bad for us and get little or no excercise.
Even among those who consider something like excercise important – there are wide ranges of choices.
My wife goes to a Gym regularly. I go outside mow the grass, cut wood, build things. When my work is busier I climb up and down 40′ roof ladders 3 times a week.
It has been nearly 6 years since Covid arrived in the US. My wife and I are one of very few people we know that NEVER got Covid.
She still gets vaccinated regularly – I quit after the 4th shot. Neither of us have gotten covid. We are both over 65 and at higher risk.
Have we made incredibly good life choices that prevented us from getting Covid ? Or have we just been very lucky ?
There is no way to know.
I attribute it to the fact that I get outside alot, and get lots of sunlight and have high levels of vitamin D. My wife was taking Vit D supliments BEFORE Covid and has high levels of Vit D.
That could be the reason. Or it could just be luck.
My point is that people make their own choices. They do not make the same choices and the “science” on much of this is not so certain that we can say with certainty that specific good choices will lead to a long and healthy life and specific bad choices will lead to a short unhealthy life. There are lots of choices that PROBABLY will lead to good or bad outcomes – but nothing close to certainty.
I noted previously that the Measles vaccine kills a couple of hundred children a year. We absolutely KNOW this – with a high degree of certainty. But we have no means of predicting which children it will kill or harm.
If as a parent you choose to vaccinate or not – you can not KNOW the results, you can only know the odds.
Government has been trying to impact childrens health for decades – during that time childrens health has declined.
Causation ? Possibly not, but absolute proof that Government is NOT improving childrens heatlh.
With respect to the left and the democratic party I find myself constantly calling attention to the Sun Tzu’s observation that one should not interfere with an enemy when they are making a mistake.
While I do not think our founders intended for impeachment to be used as it has come to be, I think the text of the constitution makes it clear that impeachment was intended to be unusual.
At the same time – the constitution provided no Check on impeachment.
The house of representatives is the final authority on what constitutes and impeachable offense.
The party being impeached can not appeal to the supreme court that the house has not adhered to the standards set in the constitution.
Ultimately that means the constitution as written allows the house of representatives to impeach for any reason they wish.
If we do not like that – the remedy is to amend the constitution.
There is however ONE remaining check on the power of impeachment – Voters.
I would note they are the ultimate check on ALL govenrment power.
The supreme court is NOT the final authority on the meaning of the constitution – the voters are.
Any supreme court decision can be overridden by amending the constitution.
The fact that the final appeal and the final authority is extremely difficult does not change the fact that it is NOT the Surpreme Court that is the final authority.
Regardless while I think that the effort to impeach Kennedy is absurdly stupid.
That is not the same as improper.
I wish the results were otherwise – but ultimately YOU LOST the argument on what constitutes and impeachable offense.
An impeachable offense is anything that the majority of the house decides is an impeachable offense.
The checks on that are that the senate does not even have to take up an impeachment by the house, and that impeachments can have political consequences for those involved.
LIz Chenney and Rep. Kinzinger are politically dead today because or their role in impeachments.
THAT is the public checking improper impeachments.
I fully support your railing into the wind about these nutso impeachments – but we are past the point of debate ovver what IS impeachable,
The debate now is over what SHOULD be impeachable and what is the political consequence for impeachment that does not have the requisite public support.
John Say, I agree with most of what you’re saying with regard to the power of the voters overruling government decisions. However, we both know how difficult and protracted adding an amendment to the Constitution can be. Plus, let’s not forget, that the party in power often sets the rules, even for voters. Which makes your reasonable solution seem more like wishful thinking than practical reality.
Voters in some states have successfully voted for their respective state governments to amend the constitution and making abortion legal through voter referendums and petitions allowed by state law. What often happens is the legislators who are supposed to honor the choice of the voters oftentimes decide to ignore or legislate their choice away because they don’t like what the voters want. So in reality when voter do express their wish to allow or change the law they are often treated like they don’t know what they really want by their elected representatives.
Today like any other day is full of Surprise, Surprise, Surprise like it was famously said by Gomer Pyle. The lefts Quacks assault normalcy and common sense daily, throwing pooh at the wall hoping for it to stick. The stench grows every day and now approaches an odor level greater than any Stock Yard. The smell is putrid and reeks of Tyranny, despotic authority as the goal for a singular ideology of surrender to the greater authority of Government. There are so many examples it would be unforgiving to list even one without assaulting another as less important.
Adding on to my previous post: one term which could fit the current crop of fools on the left and their desires would be Absolutism: power unrestrained by other institutions or individuals not associated the absolutists.
The Age of Absolutism: +/- 1550 to 1800, most resent, 2016 to present, at least that’s what the lefties think.
I don’t know why impeachment has become so fashionable. It strikes me that impeachment, particularly for an executive branch official, is a pretty blunt instrument to be used when all else fails to protect the nation from some great abuse or usurpation of power. Much more direct would be for Congress to curb the offending Executive branch official or limit infractions through legislation, questioning that official as part of Congress’ review role, and making public political arguments exposing to the press and people the alleged infraction.
In 2024 there was so much frustration about the border crisis and the apparently unlimited immigration policy as evinced by the actions of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas that the House of Representatives impeached him on a close second vote. The Senate, being of a different mind, “circular filed” that impeachment. With the requirement of two thirds majority to convict in the Senate, the impeachment instrument in a closely divided Senate is frankly a waste of time.
Which brings me around to the initial question, Why has impeachment become so fashionable? I think that it is because there seems to be a paucity of real politics thinkers and a surplus of firebrands in Congress. Is that because the electorate has an attraction, similar with a moth to light, to the loudest and perhaps most articulate complainer to represent them? Then ultimately this impeachment craze is on “we the people”.
I think the impeachment mania came from Hillary and her Watergate experience. It was more than two years from that breaking story to Nixon’s resignation. Hillary was working on Capitol Hill in the middle of it all. The only other presidential impeachment had been a century before. His resignation was unprecedented. A generation of reporters was born wanting to be the next Woodward & Bernstein and topple a president.
Then that midnight in 2016 when Trump was elected, Hillary decided to use her bespoke Steele Dossier to synthesize a Watergate-like scandal. It was like getting the band back together to put on another impeachment show.
One of the worst of Professor Turley’s commentaries.
For example, on the so-called lab leak hypothesis, it was but one federal agency which supported that and with only low confidence,
Even worse, the exact origin has no bearing one how to bring the epidemic to an end,
Etc ad nauseum.
DBB – “it was but one federal agency which supported that and with only low confidence,”
That was the case at one point.
It is not any longer. And has not been for a long time.
While there is not absolute proof that Covid came from the a leak at the Wuhan institute of Virology, the odds based on the circumstantial evidence today are quite high.
Separately, there is no instance of a human epidemic virus originating in Nature that we have not been able to identify that source in nature within 6 months at most.
China in particular has a MASSIVE incentive to find a source within nature – and still has not be able to do so.
It is generally agreed that Covid did come from the Bat Corona Virus. But it did NOT come directly from the Bat Corona Virus.
First and foremost there are myriads of genetic mutiations between the Bat Corona Virus and Covid.
We know the constraints on rates of mutation in nature and it would have taken hundreds of years for the Bat Corona Virus to mutate to Covid in Nature. That also would have left massive amounts of evidence behind in nature – we would be able to find myriads of intermediaries between the Bat Corona Virus and Covid in Nature – it is 5 years and we have not found ONE natural precursor to Covid.
That has never happened before in any instance of a jump from animals to humans.
Absent a Covid precursor in bature that pretty much means Covid came from a lab.
Somewhere it mutated from the Bat Corona Virus to Covid – and we have established that was not nature.
I would further note that even in communications with Fauxi in early 2020 his own Experts were claiming that Covid looked an awful lot like it came from a lab – that the Virus’s structure did not resemble structure that evolve in nature, that it resembled those that evolve in labs.
There is more evidence of lab origins than this – such as the demographics and geography of its early spread.
That evidence is imperfect – because the likely early victims of Covid died and were cremated and we had no test for Covid.
But we do have patterns of death and the apparent spread of a disease with the same symptms as Covid in China in the fall or 2019,
and that pattern starts with deaths of people from the WIV and then spreads to deaths radiating out from the WIV along the bus system that served WIV. We do not absolutely know these people died of Covid – as I said they are dead and cremated. But there is an unusual pattern and that pattern does not correlated with the Wet Markets and does correlate with the WIV as the source.
Further there is no evidence of early covid cases that have demographic and geographic connections to the Wet markets.
We may not have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Covid came from the WIV – but we have pretty close of 100% ruled out the Wet Markets in Wuhan as the source.
There are not alot of scientists today who are still trying to sell a natural origins theory.
Could have, should have, would have are not evidence that your assumption will ever be the right one. Even after all these years we still don’t know for sure. Making assumptions and regurgitating worn out conspiracy theories to support assumptions is never going go away.
“the exact origin has no bearing one how to bring the epidemic to an end”
In hindsight that is correct. But only in hindsight. Understanding the origin of Covid always had the possibility of giving us some information as to how to combat it.
Just as one potential example – if Covid came from nature there was the possiblity of a precursor or paralell natural virus that was far less deadly that might provide immunity.
Just as centuries ago scientists discovered that Cow Pox infection provided immunity to small pox.
Finding the precursors and natural adjacencies to Covid was a long shot possibility to a means to a possible natural vaccine.
Regardless establishing the origens of covid is massively important in trying to prevent and or detect early similar pandemic threats.
We have had a number of very close calls with very deadly viruses that were even more deadly that covid that had natural origens.
Because we were able to identify them very very early we were able to create very effective Quarantines BEFORE they became widespred and cause them to die out. But any one of these had it become widespread enough could have been far worse than Covid.
A potential pandemic virus originating from a lab is even easier to stop rapidly – because with proper procedures we should be able to KNOW that it has escaped right from Patient Zero. Stopping a virus by Quarantine – which is the most effective way to stop a virus, is exponentially more difficult the more that virus has spread.
If the origen of Covid was identified early in Wuhan Covid could have been stopped in Wuhan with a very small number of deaths.
Knowing that Covid likely came from a lab means that we can make public policy decisions about whether to conduct that type of research.
It also means that we can impliment better safety protocols for labs that are doing similar work that have even the slightest potential as a sorce for something like this.
I would note – Covid would not be the first dangerous virus that leaked from a lab. It just would be the first one that we did not stop before it became a pandemic.
The Chinese doctor who first investigated Covid traced it to the Wuhan market. After sounding the alarm, he was detained by Chinese authorities and subsequently died of Covid. That doctor died a hero, yet Republican conspiracy mongers pretend he never existed.
With so many people, COVID policy was more of a religious dogma than a scientific position. The visceral, emotional reaction to dissenting opinions was like a reaction to heresy by the Spanish Inquisition. No ability to debate or defend the party line, only punishment for the heretics. I would love to see this Congress member actually defend the policies RFK fought against on their scientific merits without hyperbole and emotion but I think she isn’t capable.
The Congresswoman decries the “chaos” caused by RFK Jr. Actually, the correct word is “change”. As a reactionary party, the Democrats see all change as “chaos”.
Useful to recall that RFK ran as a Democrat initially . The D party kicked him out, informing him that any votes he received in the NH primary would not be counted. I don’t know if that was legal or not, but it certainly was not “democratic”. To malign him now , when they rejected his candidacy is the height of hypocrisy.
No they correctly see all change that threatens their hegemony as a threat.
Because it is.
In myriads of different ways the ideology of the left does not work.
That means nature itself will ALWAYS be acting to destroy that ideology and the ideology can only be sustained through the force of government.
While this goes beyond just socialism – socialism is a perfect example of an ideology that does not work in theory or practice and requires authoritarian – even totalitarian government to avoid dying out naturally.
edwardmahl,
Recall when Democrats claimed they would return the “norms” to the WH when they beat Trump? Their version of “norms” was to put a dude in a dress to head up United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a freaky bald guy who steals luggage at airports, some “trans” dude walking around topless on the WH lawn exposing his “breasts,” granting presumptive pardons for . . . what crimes did they commit they needed to be pardon?
But! But!! But!!! They were the adults in the room.
I’m sorry Professor Turley, you say it takes the cake but I say it takes the Ding Dongs.
Psst, they hate it when you point out all the things they were wrong about and all the lives they were willing to destroy. We shouldn’t be surprised that they remain the same. Sharpening the pitch fork tines is such a thriving business that they can go to a vocational school to learn it. The name of the school is the Harvard school of journalism. The sparks fly from the grinding wheel.
“Democrats clearly oppose Kennedy’s initiatives. Fine. Using legislation and the power of the purse to push back on those efforts if you have a majority in Congress. What you should not do is use impeachment to achieve what you could not achieve during the confirmation process.”
Professor Turley, in your statement above you express what could be done (Using legislation and the power of the purse to push back on those efforts if you have a majority in Congress.) rather than impeachment of RFK, Jr.. BUT, EVERYTIME you discuss the impeachment of a judge you never actually provide an alternative to impeachment. The first lawsuit against the Trump Administration was filed at 12:01pm on January 20, 2025. One-minute after President Trump was sworn in as President! If you’re going to continue to state that impeachment of these judges is not what should be done, then please tell us what the fu*k should be done to these judges?! You’re a smart man Professor, you know that these fuc*ing judges will NEVER stop with their lawfare against President Trump! A bad judge is a bad judge and should be removed from the bench!
The bar for impeachment is set way too high. It should be lower so that judges and executive branch officials can be held accountable to the people though Congress.
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” –Thomas Sowell.
Thomas Sowell is, perhaps, the most erudite and articulate economist in our nation’s history. I think I have read every book he has authored (a loooong list) and have enjoyed the wisdom in every one. Thank you for posting this quotation.
Wiseoldlawyer – Thank you for reminding us of the wisdom of Thomas Sowell. One would think that as a great economist or historian (he qualifies as both) and as a distinguished black scholar, he would be the toast of the eastern establishment media. Yet he has been ignored by that media for almost his entire career. Why would that be?
Impeachment is the proper method for the administration to be accountable to Congress and the people. MAGAs whine about how there are all these unelected bureaucrats that are not accountable to anyone. They can’t complain when one faces accountability.
Which would be a valid argument if SCOTUS has not neutered every other way Congress can provide oversight to the president. Truth is Congress can impeach for any reason they like because it is reviewable.
In a sense, this effort may be of benefit to those who think before they vote (an unfortunately small minority, I fear). If you want to find out who are the Big Pharma lackey turncoats whom you need to vote against at your next opportunity, all that is required is to see who is supporting this impeachment. I have always disputed the rationality of the “the enemy of my enemies is my friend” paradigm, but “the enemy of my friends is my enemy” has always worked quite well for me.
JJC says: Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) appears to be standing up for the Tammany Hall democrats who have run HHS since the days of when it was called HEW. The Opiates MLD case in Ohio has revealed a lot of inside baseball stories about corruption in the pharma industry but none of it could have existed without the complicity of, you guess it, HHS.
Consider this one brief anecdote. Thirty years ago this month, the FDA’s division of Center for Drug Evaluation and Research approved OxyContin®, a long-acting form of oxycodone, a synthetic opiate drug as potent as morphine. The chief medical officer for the CDER’s task was Curtis Wright, MD. Court evidence show Wright was in private contact with Purdue Pharma, the drug’s sponsor, before the new drug application came before the CDER for approval.
One of the sticking points was a sentence is the drug’s label claiming that long-acting opioids have less abuse potential than short-acting ones. This was false and virtually all at the CDER table knew it or should have known it. The drug was approved and this sentence was used by the company’s sales force to convince doctors and patients that it was safe. They and Wright were wrong. More people have died from OxyContin abuse than have died in all the wars of the US since the Civil War. A simple fix in the tablet’s design as ordered years later might have saved many lives.
Wright subsequently retired from the FDA and two years after he pushed through the approval of OxyContin, he was hired as the Executive Director for Risk Assessment and Health Policy, wait for it, by PURDUE PHARMA. I wish I could say that what happened in this instance was a one-off but, unfortunately, there are too many similar stories of industry-wannabes doing favors to ingratiate themselves with their future employers. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) should study the facts before her. RFK, jr may be a little rough around the edges but, like his boss, the people prefer candor and honesty over corruption and duplicity.
“They and Wright were wrong. More people have died from OxyContin *abuse* . . .” (Emphasis added)
You buried the lede in your argument: “abuse.”
OxyContin, when taken by responsible people who follow prescription guidelines, gives those suffering from chronic, acute pain significant relief and a much better quality of life.
This is true, Sam, but the law (Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) requires the CDER (i.e., HHS & FDA) to weigh a drug’s benefits against its risks of abuse. Oxycodone was already approved long before OxyContin, so the FDA’s job was to approve the delivery system. This is where the system broke down and allowed bad science to take over and approve a tablet that proved to be easily crushed for misuse. Oxycodone’s use as a pain reliever was never in question, only its new delivery system. Subsequent criminal and civil trials showed this to be true, and Pursue Pharma is or has been in bankruptcy because of having to pay billions to settle claims that the company violated various statutes. Whether the drug was or is a good pain reliever is irrelevant and was never an issue in the abuse and fraud cases.
jjc – While not defending Big Pharma – the govenrment should have stayed out of the Oxycontin issue.
Frankly the FDA does more harm than good The entire reason we have Big Pharma rather than a more varried natural market is because Government makes drug approval so complex and expensive that only very large companies can manage it.
People do not grasp that the most significant supporters of govenrment regulation are Big Companies.
Free markets are brutal. They massively favor consumers over producers. the most successful producers rarely last long.
Look around the biggest companies in the world – Amazon, Microsoft Apple, NVidia have not been around all that long.
Many of the giants of 50 years ago – are gone or inconsequential. Where is Kodak Polaroid ?
AT&T is just one of many cell companies today.
Nothing appeals more to big business than becomeing a public utility – answerable to govenrment, not consumers.
Guaranteed continued existance forever.
Big business will ALWAYS seek regulation to create barriers to entry. The greatest threats to big business are NOT other big businesses, but paradigm shifting startups. 99% of these poses absolutely no threat to Big Business. But every single big business has its own origens story – and all the giants of today started in a garage somewhere decades ago. They know exactly where their future threat comes from.
“People do not grasp that the most significant supporters of govenrment regulation are Big Companies.
Free markets are brutal. They massively favor consumers over producers. the most successful producers rarely last long.”
Big companies also spend big on lobbying which is free speech. Big companies are also supported by Republicans. Who makes the rules? Big companies who spend the most to schmooze, wine and dine lawmakers with big free speech guaranteed donations. How does the consumer win against that when the consumer can barely afford to stay solvent except the wealthiest?
Free markets work when consumers are not treading water all the time and big companies are not fully in control of lobbying and multi million dollar political donations.
Ironically it was big companies who sent manufacturing jobs and supply chains to China because free market ideas of cheaper labor and better capacity.
“Big companies also spend big on lobbying which is free speech.”
Correct – but what do big companies lobby FOR – Rules that favor them.
Ultimately they lobby for more govenrment power – not less.
There would be absolutely no lobbiests at all if there was no govenrment power over the economy.
If you wish to get rid of rent seeking (lobbying) – all you need to do is reduce the power of govenrment over the economy.
The entire purpose of lobbying is to get government to use power that it should not have to pick winners and losers in areas it should be be involved it. That is called rent seeking.
“Big companies are also supported by Republicans.”
I really do not give a crap about the republican Democrat argument here – I am not a republican – I am a libertarains.
That said your claim is FALSE – the vast majority of political money from the wealth and from big business is directed towards democrats – not republicans. Why ? Because democrats sell favorable regulation – again – Rent Seeking.
“Who makes the rules? Big companies who spend the most to schmooze, wine and dine lawmakers with big free speech guaranteed donations.”
Absolutely – though you are idiotically pretending that politicians are some innocent scapegoats in this.
Nor is this about wining and dining. that is the LEAST consequential impact.
Those of you on the left tend to Hate landlords – which is stupid – landlords are the people who invest their wealth to provide homes for most of the people in the country. Even slumlords provide crappy homes to people who can not afford better.
Look arround – we have a homeless problem today. Why ? Because we have far too few crappy places that the poorest people can afford to live. Like it or not the only magic that makes what people want actually affodable over the long run is free markets.
Regardless, my point is that the left hates landlords.
Well that is precisely what government involvment in the economy is – Government as the landlord Renting what should be a right – the right to do as you deem well benefit you and consumers in the marketplace.
Our regulators, our politicians are not some innocents being wined and dined by lobbiests – they are people who crave the power they wield and constantly seek more and rent out that power to the highest bidder.
” How does the consumer win against that when the consumer can barely afford to stay solvent except the wealthiest?”
And yet the standard of living in the US has doubled approximaely every 20 years throughout my lifetime.
Further the standard of living throughout the world has doubled several times over in the same period.
In the 60’s Nuns at school beat us to put nickles in milk boxes to feed the starving chidren in Bangledesch.
Millions – even hundreds of millions accross the world were dying of starvation. Today we rant because a Factory fire in Banglesdesh kills a few hundred workers – as lamentable as that is – it is those factories that are why the starvation has ended.
Today all starvation globally is the consequence of politics.
There is not a single country in the entire world that is not capable of feeding itself with what it is capable of producing.
We have 2 and a half times more people than in 1965 they eat on average twice as much food as in 1965, which is produced on half as much land as in 1965. That is entirely the consequence of a global increase in economic freedom – free markets.
China has gone from a complete lack of freedom of any kind under Mao to significant economic freedom. It has gone from an agricultural country that was importing most of its food to an industrial country that exports food.
It has gone from nearly the lowest standard of living in the world to the bottom of the first world – from aveage real income of 300./yr to 11,000/yr. All the consequence of significantly increased economic freedom after Maos death.
The FACT is that your story about the weakness of consumers is a false myth.
Budweiser recently featured a MTF Trans on its core Beer, and the response by its market obliterated 25% of Anheiser Bush’s value as a company. Consumers are unbeleivably powerful – and always have been.
In 1983 when I got married I bough a top of the line Amana Refridgerator for $1200 wholesale.
Today I can go to any box store and buy a fridge that is far better than that Amana – that has Ice and water in the door, that has vegetable crispers and myriads of other features that Amana had not dreamed of in 1983 – and I can buy it for under $1000.
The price is LOWER in NOMINAL dollars – In real dollars todays refridgerators cost about 1/3 what they did in 1983.
Why are republicans starting to do so well with minorities ? Because the working class in the US is better off than it has ever been in history. The 4th quintile in the US – the working class is doing better than the 3rd Quintile – the middle class in Europe.
You rant that consumers have no power – but the FACT is that virtually everything is cheaper in real dollars today that when I was a teenager, and the majority of things are cheaper in nominal prices. The exceptions are those things that Government is moest heavily involved in. Health Care and education being the huge example.
If Govenrment regulation worked so well why is it that our worst problems are in those areas that govenrment has the most control ?
“Free markets work”
Period – always and everywhere – the freer the better they work – the data on that is absolutely damning.
China and india do NOT have free markets – but economic freedom in those countries is an order of magnitude greater than 50 years ago and the increase in stanard of living is phenomenal.
That has been repeated ALL OVER THE WORLD – the less economic freedom a country has the slower the rate of growth has been.
The more it has the faster it has been Even countries like China that are authoritarian and repressive have had explosive growth just because they have become LESS authoritarian and repressive.
” when consumers are not treading water all the time”
Consumers are not treading water all the time.
I do not know how old you are – but anyone who has been an adult for 20 years has observed a near doubling of their standard of living and nearly everyone around them. That happens so quietly few of us notice. But it absolutely happens.
“big companies are not fully in control of lobbying and multi million dollar political donations.”
The very good news is that despite the fact that Government is going pretty much the wrong direction with most everything.
We have enough economic freedom in this country that Freedom is growing faster than government.
We are both more free and less free than we were 50 years ago. We have both more laws and regulations governing our lives and more opportunities than ever before.
“Ironically it was big companies who sent manufacturing jobs and supply chains to China because free market ideas of cheaper labor and better capacity.”
Absolutely – and we are all better off for that – the Chinese are better off and people in other countries are better off.
The GDP of the US today is $30T US gdp in 1965 with about half the number of people was $750B.
We are better off – China is better off.
Today many of those jobs are leaving China – why ? because Chinese labor is no longer so incredbly low cost.
That means just like the US 50+ years ago – China must produce goods where the value add from the the labor is greater
it can not continue to produce low skill goods because doing so will not result in rising standard of living.
Low skill jobs are leavin China for other poor countries int he world.
Or they are leaving for the US – where the production of those goods will be highly automated – with very few low skill jobs ut more high skill and higher paying jobs.
Standard of living can only rise if you produce more value with less human labor. There is absolutely no other way to increase standard of living. The US has seen our GDP increase more than 30 fold – even adjusting for inflation that is still 4 fold or more – and that is the increase we have seen in our standard of living.
Regardless standard of living rises when you produce more value with less effort.
That is an immutable rule – in fact it is just basic math.
Sending low skill production to china decades ago was a very good idea that benefited china and the US.
Some of that is leaving China and returning to the US or going to even poorer countries – and that too is a good thing.
What matters is producing greater value at lower cost.
That is how standard of living rises.
There are a near infinite number of factors that determine the best way and the best place to produce anything – and those factors are dynamic and change over time.
But the objective is to produce more value for less cost.
That is the ONLY way that standard of living rises.
Free markets are the ONLY engine that we have ever found that reliably does that.
The problem the left has with them is they do not benefit everyone all the time, and they do not benefit everyone equally.
But over time they benefit everyone. Nothing else does that nearly so well.
Let me ask you something: If your standard of living doubles in the next 10 years – if the way you live improves, if the food you eat imporves if most everything about your life is twice as good as it was now.
Do you care if Elon Musk becomes worth $10T ?
Next – lets say that Musks net worth increases by a factor of 20 over the next 10 years.
Will his standard of living increase by a factor of 20 ? Will it increase by a factor of 2 ?
Will it increase at all ?
The uber rich can and likely will accumulate more “wealth” – but all that “wealth” will be invested.
It will be investing in making them even more money – that they can not possibly spend and that will have zero impact on their standard of living. But THEIR increased money WILL increase YOUR standard of living. Nearly all of Musk’s money is invested in producing cars, rockets, ….. All things that YOU or someone else wants – and is paying for, and all that require large numbers of high paying jobs to produce.
Musk has the midas touch – everything he touches turns to gold.
And it is YOU – US that benefits.
That said – I do not want Musk wasting money renting power from Government.
I want government out of his way so that he can spend that money improving my life.
With respect to Oxycontin and the Sacklers – I do not think there is anything all that unusual about the Sacklers.
Nor do I think Oxycontin would have lasted very long in truly free market.
There appears to be a legitimate case for “false advertising” by the Sacklers – beyond that their agressive efforts to sell a product are just the normal workings of a free market that get improperly demonized by the left all the time.
Further I am not entirely sold on the Oxycontin story as presented in the media.
You note that OxyContin can be crushed and abused by addicts – and that is true.
But the real problem awas not abuse by traditional drug addicts – but the structural arrangement created by Government and Big Pharma and the medical profession that made is easy for people to become addicts easily through little or no fault of their own.
Significant abuse of Oxycontin by the traditional population fo drug addicts was short lived.
Why ? Because in comparison to illegal drugs that are easier to abuse OxyContin was always expensive.
Heroine was cheaper than Oxy and Fentanyl today is cheaper than Heroine – and despite the fact that it is far more dangerous
and the high allegedly less satisfying – Fentanyl has driven nearly all other abused drugs to the fringes.
The huge problem for Oxycontin is that it was a gateway drug that could bring large numbers of people who would not otherwise become addicts into the world of drug addiction.
The story – whcih is correct is that the Saklers got greedy and the consequence was serius drug addiction even death in people who would not otherwise have become addicted.
That story is atleast partly true. It is also not unusual in free markets – but it is also NOT the whole story.
The story that OxyContin was bad is true. But it is also true that it was good. There are very large numbers of people who either suffer from chronic debilitating pain or who are terminal who actually benefited From Oxycontin and who were harmed as the Government became more restrictive.
One of the problems is that there are not one size fits all solutions to any of our problems,
and quite often even solutions that work to solve one problem create other problems – sometimes worse problems.
Government and regulation are abysmally bad at dealing with that.
The Saklers were absolutely correct that there was an underservered market of people who were in either chronic or terminal pain and that there was a huge market for a product that could help them.
They were also correct in trying to get arround govenrment regulations – because those interfered with delivering to people who were truly in need a product that would help them.
But serving the legitimate market for OxyContin had less beneficial consequences too.
The BEST solution would be private lawsuits – even class actions from those improperly harmed by the overly agressive marketing of OxyContin – and REASONABLE judgements against the Saklers by the courts.
That is not what we got.
If the govenrment has stayed out of it and courts had remained rational – The Saklers would have been forced to figure out how to serve their legitimate market while reducing the number of new addicts they unintentionally created.
Regardless – I do not care all that much about OxyContin or the Saklers.
My real point is that even in this allegedly egregious example of out of control corporate greed – the story is far more complex that what is told on TV and free markets have always done a better job than government of constraining the negative impacts of self interest and amplifying the positive ones.
Americans enjoy the freedom of obtaining healthcare from free, self-regulated, private doctors and hospitals in the free markets of the private sector.
HHS, the CDC et al. are irrefutably unconstitutional.
Congress has no power to tax for, fund, operate, or regulate any aspect or facet of the healthcare industry to any degree.
Article 1, Section 8: Congress has the power to tax only for debt, defense, and general welfare (i.e. security and basic infrastructure).
Article 1, Section 8, Congress has the power to regulate only “the value of money,” “commerce among nations, states, and Indian tribes,” and “land and naval Forces.”
“That is all.”
All these are arguably unconstitutional.
But far more importantly – they are all unarguably a bad idea.
Government is FORCE and if FORCE was an effective way to accomplish everything not just the US but the entire would would still rest on a slave economy.
Government is always the least efficient way to do anything.
Therefore Government should only do those things that can only be done by government.
Those are incredibly important – without them nothing else works. ‘
But there are also very few things that only government can do.
Government should only do those things the Constitution allows it to do.
Read it.
America was designed and intended to be free and free of government to the greatest degree possible.
Everything, with the exception of the few items mentioned in Article 1, Section 8, is to be done by free people operating free enterprises of the free industries in the free markets of the free private sector.
*. Back on earth red dyes in foods were gone ages ago. I’m not eating beef fat nor margarine nor any animal fat. Vaccines are sensitive to temperature and shipping negligence renders them all but useless. I don’t care if RFK is impeached or not.
Meanwhile, there’s a tsunami of narco-states in all of Latin America. Obama used in the US narco state followed by Biden’s phase 2. DJT could hit it hard for 3 years left but it would reinfect as the clown Benny Thompsom questions Noem. His head swivels like a machine.
Do your time…
The upside? That’s evident. When you’ve seen bad you know there’s good.
^^^ used correction to ushered
I do not know if you or RFK jr. are right in your claims.
Nor do I care – each of us must be free to make our own choices – and reap the benefits or costs of those choices.
If RFK jr. is increasing our freedom to make decisions about our own lives – i Fully support that – even though many will use that freedom to make bad choices.
There will be drugs so long as there is a demand for them.
But the ultimate collapse of Narco states is inevitable.
The world is ALWAYS changing. Currently those changes are the likely decline of China and Russia, and much of Europe,
The rise of the US, the Rise of othr pacific rim nations and the rise of the western hemisphere.
Venezuela was once the highest standard of living in the western hemisphere outside the US.
The fall of Maduro and socialism will allow Venezuella to prosper again – that benefits Venezuellans and that benefits all of us.
Mexico too has an incredible future – if it can disempower Cartels.
The problem is NOT drugs, it is the disruption and corruption that Cartels bring.
The world is likely to be quite different in 10 years.
Did anyone thing China would be the 2nd largest economy in the world while Mao was alive ?
Bet that the future will be better than the present – you will never lose.
Kennedy Promised Senators He Would Not Interfere In Scientific Policy
After explicitly promising senators during his confirmation hearing that he would not interfere in scientific policy over which Americans should receive which vaccines, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week fired every member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the group of experts who help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention make those evidence-based judgments. Kennedy then appointed new members, including vaccine skeptics, prompting alarm from the broader medical community.
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/podcast/what-the-health-401-rfk-kennedy-vaccines-hhs-nih-june-12-2025/
……………………………….
Kennedy perjured himself by denying his intentions before a Senate committee in order to gain confirmation.
Are scientists infallible gods or human beings?
Does the free private sector not employ the best science and scientists?
Do scientists not pursue financial gain as a primary goal?
What scientist worth his salt would pursue a government job?
Predictions about the impacts of different choices are the domain of economists and actuaries – not scientists.
You can not commit perjury with statements about the future – that is absurd.
And you most certainly con not commit perjury by statements about your intentions.
With respect to “scientific policy” – there is no such thing.
Science is the process of discovery. It is not supposed to have anything to do with politics or ideology.
The advisory board you rant about – is just that – it is POLITICAL. It exists to provide ADVICE to politicians.
Advice BTW is predictions about the future effects of current acts. It is not science.
It MIGHT be informed by science – but it is absolutley NOT science.
Regardless scientific policy is an oxymoron – it does not exist.
I would separately note that purported scientists in nearly the same filed made allegedly evidence based advice on COVID – How well did that work out.
The FACT is that Scientists are RARELY better at future predictions than anyone else.
You rant about “evidence based judgements” – How ell did that would with Covid ? How well has that worked with Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming ? Do I need to list the predictions of “scientists” that have all proven egregiously false ?
Regardless the IPCC’s predictions for future warming – and the IPCC is among the most conservative of the Warmist groups of politicized scientists have been 2.5 std dev to warm in their predictions.
Statistically that means they are less accurate than throwing darts blind folded, and that is the least hysterical group of CAGW advocates.
We are 2 and a half decades past “an inconvenient truth” we are a decade past nearly all its predictions. NONE have come true.
These are the predictions of purportedly the best of scientists from 2000.
With respect to Vaccines – fundimentally we are NOT dealing with Science – we are dealing with relatively simple match and statistics.
How many people will be harmed – even die from the vaccine – there is no vaccine in existance that does not cause deaths or other harm.
But some have higher and some have lower rates of death and harms.
Vs. How many people will die or be harmed by the disease being vaccinated against.
The US was declared Measles eradicated in 2000, it was declared Rubella eradicated in 2004.
We do still see rare instances of these diseases – because we have over 1M legal immigrants each year, between 1-4M illegal immigrants and far larger numbers of tourists and other travelers.
We generally require proof of vaccination for people entering the US from places that diseases have NOT been eradicated
Though we have SOME places that you can travel to the US from without a visa for less than 90 days.
Others such as Canada you do not even need a passport to enter the US only some proof of identification.
So long as we do not do a near perfect job of stopping contagious diseases at our borders will will on rare occasions have brief resurgences of those diseases in the US. That is true whether we continue to vaccinate or not.
That said the math over the past 25 years shows that vaccine related deaths/year are over the long run HIGHER than those caused by foreigners entering the US.
There are myriads of diseases that are present int he rest of the world that are extremely uncommon in the US that we do not vaccinate for.
Why ? Because the harm from the vaccine is greater than the harm form the rare incidents in which that disease gets into the US.
When that occurs – as we have seen as a result of 11-20M illegal immigrants who did not have to get visa’s or prove immunity or even have a health inspection before entering the US – we have effective tools to limit the harm – such as Quarantines.
Parents should be allowed to make their own decisions regarding Vaccination.
A tiny number of parents who chose to vaccinate whose children die or are harmed by the vaccine will regret that choice – but most will not.
Conversely the tiny number of children who are not vaccinated who die from these diseases will have parents that regret not vaccinating – but most will not. Regardless, children who are not vaccinated can simply quarantine themselves when there are nearby outbreaks.
the “advice” that should be offered regarding Vaccine policy is NOT advice – it is just math and statistics.
While they are not science – they are tools of science. They are also tools of pretty much everything else.
Regardless if you want to know what the outcomes of different vaccination choices are – your best source would be an actuary – not a scientist.
Because this is math not science.
Sure. Fire the guy that actually cares about our health and is asking questions. All this tells me is that there industries terrified the status quo of their profits is shifting, and a great many people in the DNC are complicit. Guess all the talk of homeopathy on the part of progressives was just more boosheet (and Mrs. Obama literally remade the nutritional pyramid, so eff off, dems). This is past stupid; it is now retard*d. Who is running the poop show on the left? Do these people also eat their own boogers?
Common sense does not exist in those waters. Zip, zilch, nada. And they can take their faux compassion and stick it right up there.
James,
Exactly! Common sense is a trait Democrats seem to have lost. All they have now is hate, rage and fear. Trump and DODGE exposing all that fraud, waste and abuse which was funneled to many Democrat NGOs has them scared the grift is up.
I did think Mrs. Obama idea of “Lets move!” was a good idea. Unfortunately, she did not follow through and it fell flat.
@Upstate
Yes. And I really want to emphasize the fact that Michelle Obama changed the *entire freaking food pyramid* for nutrition, just because. Does anyone think that was just prescience? No, there were dollars involved.
Granted, young, woke progressives were either not even alive then, or at the least, very young. They do not know a time when you could not just go to Whole Foods and buy whatever is equally calorically and processed awful vegan cr*p off the shelf as a bag of chips or a doughnut. Sorry, guys, but the rest of us remember, and we vote. For everything. Things they don’t even know about because they are insulated little tools.
As an *actual* farmer, you are of course well aware of all of this, hermano, at least on this site. To many millennials ‘farming’ pretty much means growing p*t. Good luck eating that to survive.
The core problem is that none of this belongs in government.
Look around – each and everyone of us makes our own choices regarding our health AND how important it is to us.
Some of us are excercise fanatics. Some of us live off of nuts and berries. Some of us still smoke. eat things that are likely bad for us and get little or no excercise.
Even among those who consider something like excercise important – there are wide ranges of choices.
My wife goes to a Gym regularly. I go outside mow the grass, cut wood, build things. When my work is busier I climb up and down 40′ roof ladders 3 times a week.
It has been nearly 6 years since Covid arrived in the US. My wife and I are one of very few people we know that NEVER got Covid.
She still gets vaccinated regularly – I quit after the 4th shot. Neither of us have gotten covid. We are both over 65 and at higher risk.
Have we made incredibly good life choices that prevented us from getting Covid ? Or have we just been very lucky ?
There is no way to know.
I attribute it to the fact that I get outside alot, and get lots of sunlight and have high levels of vitamin D. My wife was taking Vit D supliments BEFORE Covid and has high levels of Vit D.
That could be the reason. Or it could just be luck.
My point is that people make their own choices. They do not make the same choices and the “science” on much of this is not so certain that we can say with certainty that specific good choices will lead to a long and healthy life and specific bad choices will lead to a short unhealthy life. There are lots of choices that PROBABLY will lead to good or bad outcomes – but nothing close to certainty.
I noted previously that the Measles vaccine kills a couple of hundred children a year. We absolutely KNOW this – with a high degree of certainty. But we have no means of predicting which children it will kill or harm.
If as a parent you choose to vaccinate or not – you can not KNOW the results, you can only know the odds.
Government has been trying to impact childrens health for decades – during that time childrens health has declined.
Causation ? Possibly not, but absolute proof that Government is NOT improving childrens heatlh.
With respect to the left and the democratic party I find myself constantly calling attention to the Sun Tzu’s observation that one should not interfere with an enemy when they are making a mistake.
I beg to differ with Prof. Turley.
While I do not think our founders intended for impeachment to be used as it has come to be, I think the text of the constitution makes it clear that impeachment was intended to be unusual.
At the same time – the constitution provided no Check on impeachment.
The house of representatives is the final authority on what constitutes and impeachable offense.
The party being impeached can not appeal to the supreme court that the house has not adhered to the standards set in the constitution.
Ultimately that means the constitution as written allows the house of representatives to impeach for any reason they wish.
If we do not like that – the remedy is to amend the constitution.
There is however ONE remaining check on the power of impeachment – Voters.
I would note they are the ultimate check on ALL govenrment power.
The supreme court is NOT the final authority on the meaning of the constitution – the voters are.
Any supreme court decision can be overridden by amending the constitution.
The fact that the final appeal and the final authority is extremely difficult does not change the fact that it is NOT the Surpreme Court that is the final authority.
Regardless while I think that the effort to impeach Kennedy is absurdly stupid.
That is not the same as improper.
I wish the results were otherwise – but ultimately YOU LOST the argument on what constitutes and impeachable offense.
An impeachable offense is anything that the majority of the house decides is an impeachable offense.
The checks on that are that the senate does not even have to take up an impeachment by the house, and that impeachments can have political consequences for those involved.
LIz Chenney and Rep. Kinzinger are politically dead today because or their role in impeachments.
THAT is the public checking improper impeachments.
I fully support your railing into the wind about these nutso impeachments – but we are past the point of debate ovver what IS impeachable,
The debate now is over what SHOULD be impeachable and what is the political consequence for impeachment that does not have the requisite public support.
John Say, I agree with most of what you’re saying with regard to the power of the voters overruling government decisions. However, we both know how difficult and protracted adding an amendment to the Constitution can be. Plus, let’s not forget, that the party in power often sets the rules, even for voters. Which makes your reasonable solution seem more like wishful thinking than practical reality.
Voters in some states have successfully voted for their respective state governments to amend the constitution and making abortion legal through voter referendums and petitions allowed by state law. What often happens is the legislators who are supposed to honor the choice of the voters oftentimes decide to ignore or legislate their choice away because they don’t like what the voters want. So in reality when voter do express their wish to allow or change the law they are often treated like they don’t know what they really want by their elected representatives.
What crime has RFK Committed, John? A crime he’d be prosecuted for after confirmed impeachment.
Today like any other day is full of Surprise, Surprise, Surprise like it was famously said by Gomer Pyle. The lefts Quacks assault normalcy and common sense daily, throwing pooh at the wall hoping for it to stick. The stench grows every day and now approaches an odor level greater than any Stock Yard. The smell is putrid and reeks of Tyranny, despotic authority as the goal for a singular ideology of surrender to the greater authority of Government. There are so many examples it would be unforgiving to list even one without assaulting another as less important.
Adding on to my previous post: one term which could fit the current crop of fools on the left and their desires would be Absolutism: power unrestrained by other institutions or individuals not associated the absolutists.
The Age of Absolutism: +/- 1550 to 1800, most resent, 2016 to present, at least that’s what the lefties think.
I don’t know why impeachment has become so fashionable. It strikes me that impeachment, particularly for an executive branch official, is a pretty blunt instrument to be used when all else fails to protect the nation from some great abuse or usurpation of power. Much more direct would be for Congress to curb the offending Executive branch official or limit infractions through legislation, questioning that official as part of Congress’ review role, and making public political arguments exposing to the press and people the alleged infraction.
In 2024 there was so much frustration about the border crisis and the apparently unlimited immigration policy as evinced by the actions of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas that the House of Representatives impeached him on a close second vote. The Senate, being of a different mind, “circular filed” that impeachment. With the requirement of two thirds majority to convict in the Senate, the impeachment instrument in a closely divided Senate is frankly a waste of time.
Which brings me around to the initial question, Why has impeachment become so fashionable? I think that it is because there seems to be a paucity of real politics thinkers and a surplus of firebrands in Congress. Is that because the electorate has an attraction, similar with a moth to light, to the loudest and perhaps most articulate complainer to represent them? Then ultimately this impeachment craze is on “we the people”.
I think the impeachment mania came from Hillary and her Watergate experience. It was more than two years from that breaking story to Nixon’s resignation. Hillary was working on Capitol Hill in the middle of it all. The only other presidential impeachment had been a century before. His resignation was unprecedented. A generation of reporters was born wanting to be the next Woodward & Bernstein and topple a president.
Then that midnight in 2016 when Trump was elected, Hillary decided to use her bespoke Steele Dossier to synthesize a Watergate-like scandal. It was like getting the band back together to put on another impeachment show.
Thank you, Professor Turley.
“utter lunacy” is all they have left. Unfortunately they are so good at it, it’s an endless stream.
One of the worst of Professor Turley’s commentaries.
For example, on the so-called lab leak hypothesis, it was but one federal agency which supported that and with only low confidence,
Even worse, the exact origin has no bearing one how to bring the epidemic to an end,
Etc ad nauseum.
DBB – “it was but one federal agency which supported that and with only low confidence,”
That was the case at one point.
It is not any longer. And has not been for a long time.
While there is not absolute proof that Covid came from the a leak at the Wuhan institute of Virology, the odds based on the circumstantial evidence today are quite high.
Separately, there is no instance of a human epidemic virus originating in Nature that we have not been able to identify that source in nature within 6 months at most.
China in particular has a MASSIVE incentive to find a source within nature – and still has not be able to do so.
It is generally agreed that Covid did come from the Bat Corona Virus. But it did NOT come directly from the Bat Corona Virus.
First and foremost there are myriads of genetic mutiations between the Bat Corona Virus and Covid.
We know the constraints on rates of mutation in nature and it would have taken hundreds of years for the Bat Corona Virus to mutate to Covid in Nature. That also would have left massive amounts of evidence behind in nature – we would be able to find myriads of intermediaries between the Bat Corona Virus and Covid in Nature – it is 5 years and we have not found ONE natural precursor to Covid.
That has never happened before in any instance of a jump from animals to humans.
Absent a Covid precursor in bature that pretty much means Covid came from a lab.
Somewhere it mutated from the Bat Corona Virus to Covid – and we have established that was not nature.
I would further note that even in communications with Fauxi in early 2020 his own Experts were claiming that Covid looked an awful lot like it came from a lab – that the Virus’s structure did not resemble structure that evolve in nature, that it resembled those that evolve in labs.
There is more evidence of lab origins than this – such as the demographics and geography of its early spread.
That evidence is imperfect – because the likely early victims of Covid died and were cremated and we had no test for Covid.
But we do have patterns of death and the apparent spread of a disease with the same symptms as Covid in China in the fall or 2019,
and that pattern starts with deaths of people from the WIV and then spreads to deaths radiating out from the WIV along the bus system that served WIV. We do not absolutely know these people died of Covid – as I said they are dead and cremated. But there is an unusual pattern and that pattern does not correlated with the Wet Markets and does correlate with the WIV as the source.
Further there is no evidence of early covid cases that have demographic and geographic connections to the Wet markets.
We may not have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Covid came from the WIV – but we have pretty close of 100% ruled out the Wet Markets in Wuhan as the source.
There are not alot of scientists today who are still trying to sell a natural origins theory.
Could have, should have, would have are not evidence that your assumption will ever be the right one. Even after all these years we still don’t know for sure. Making assumptions and regurgitating worn out conspiracy theories to support assumptions is never going go away.
“the exact origin has no bearing one how to bring the epidemic to an end”
In hindsight that is correct. But only in hindsight. Understanding the origin of Covid always had the possibility of giving us some information as to how to combat it.
Just as one potential example – if Covid came from nature there was the possiblity of a precursor or paralell natural virus that was far less deadly that might provide immunity.
Just as centuries ago scientists discovered that Cow Pox infection provided immunity to small pox.
Finding the precursors and natural adjacencies to Covid was a long shot possibility to a means to a possible natural vaccine.
Regardless establishing the origens of covid is massively important in trying to prevent and or detect early similar pandemic threats.
We have had a number of very close calls with very deadly viruses that were even more deadly that covid that had natural origens.
Because we were able to identify them very very early we were able to create very effective Quarantines BEFORE they became widespred and cause them to die out. But any one of these had it become widespread enough could have been far worse than Covid.
A potential pandemic virus originating from a lab is even easier to stop rapidly – because with proper procedures we should be able to KNOW that it has escaped right from Patient Zero. Stopping a virus by Quarantine – which is the most effective way to stop a virus, is exponentially more difficult the more that virus has spread.
If the origen of Covid was identified early in Wuhan Covid could have been stopped in Wuhan with a very small number of deaths.
Knowing that Covid likely came from a lab means that we can make public policy decisions about whether to conduct that type of research.
It also means that we can impliment better safety protocols for labs that are doing similar work that have even the slightest potential as a sorce for something like this.
I would note – Covid would not be the first dangerous virus that leaked from a lab. It just would be the first one that we did not stop before it became a pandemic.
The Chinese doctor who first investigated Covid traced it to the Wuhan market. After sounding the alarm, he was detained by Chinese authorities and subsequently died of Covid. That doctor died a hero, yet Republican conspiracy mongers pretend he never existed.
No, CCP apparatchiks pretend he never existed. Everyone goes to the market, including infectious lab techs and their associates. Are you a CCP bot?
With so many people, COVID policy was more of a religious dogma than a scientific position. The visceral, emotional reaction to dissenting opinions was like a reaction to heresy by the Spanish Inquisition. No ability to debate or defend the party line, only punishment for the heretics. I would love to see this Congress member actually defend the policies RFK fought against on their scientific merits without hyperbole and emotion but I think she isn’t capable.
The Congresswoman decries the “chaos” caused by RFK Jr. Actually, the correct word is “change”. As a reactionary party, the Democrats see all change as “chaos”.
Useful to recall that RFK ran as a Democrat initially . The D party kicked him out, informing him that any votes he received in the NH primary would not be counted. I don’t know if that was legal or not, but it certainly was not “democratic”. To malign him now , when they rejected his candidacy is the height of hypocrisy.
No they correctly see all change that threatens their hegemony as a threat.
Because it is.
In myriads of different ways the ideology of the left does not work.
That means nature itself will ALWAYS be acting to destroy that ideology and the ideology can only be sustained through the force of government.
While this goes beyond just socialism – socialism is a perfect example of an ideology that does not work in theory or practice and requires authoritarian – even totalitarian government to avoid dying out naturally.
edwardmahl,
Recall when Democrats claimed they would return the “norms” to the WH when they beat Trump? Their version of “norms” was to put a dude in a dress to head up United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a freaky bald guy who steals luggage at airports, some “trans” dude walking around topless on the WH lawn exposing his “breasts,” granting presumptive pardons for . . . what crimes did they commit they needed to be pardon?
But! But!! But!!! They were the adults in the room.
I’m sorry Professor Turley, you say it takes the cake but I say it takes the Ding Dongs.
Psst, they hate it when you point out all the things they were wrong about and all the lives they were willing to destroy. We shouldn’t be surprised that they remain the same. Sharpening the pitch fork tines is such a thriving business that they can go to a vocational school to learn it. The name of the school is the Harvard school of journalism. The sparks fly from the grinding wheel.
Democrats, The Party of Assassination, Violence and Impeachment Mania.
“Democrats clearly oppose Kennedy’s initiatives. Fine. Using legislation and the power of the purse to push back on those efforts if you have a majority in Congress. What you should not do is use impeachment to achieve what you could not achieve during the confirmation process.”
Professor Turley, in your statement above you express what could be done (Using legislation and the power of the purse to push back on those efforts if you have a majority in Congress.) rather than impeachment of RFK, Jr.. BUT, EVERYTIME you discuss the impeachment of a judge you never actually provide an alternative to impeachment. The first lawsuit against the Trump Administration was filed at 12:01pm on January 20, 2025. One-minute after President Trump was sworn in as President! If you’re going to continue to state that impeachment of these judges is not what should be done, then please tell us what the fu*k should be done to these judges?! You’re a smart man Professor, you know that these fuc*ing judges will NEVER stop with their lawfare against President Trump! A bad judge is a bad judge and should be removed from the bench!
The bar for impeachment is set way too high. It should be lower so that judges and executive branch officials can be held accountable to the people though Congress.
“It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” –Thomas Sowell.
Thomas Sowell is, perhaps, the most erudite and articulate economist in our nation’s history. I think I have read every book he has authored (a loooong list) and have enjoyed the wisdom in every one. Thank you for posting this quotation.
Wiseoldlawyer – Thank you for reminding us of the wisdom of Thomas Sowell. One would think that as a great economist or historian (he qualifies as both) and as a distinguished black scholar, he would be the toast of the eastern establishment media. Yet he has been ignored by that media for almost his entire career. Why would that be?
You’re 90+, did you understand any of the looooong list of his books?
Anon 11:26am – Your question is adolescent at best.
Impeachment is the proper method for the administration to be accountable to Congress and the people. MAGAs whine about how there are all these unelected bureaucrats that are not accountable to anyone. They can’t complain when one faces accountability.
Anonymous, fair point.
Impeachment is for high crimes and misdemeanors. Not because you disagree with someone.
Which would be a valid argument if SCOTUS has not neutered every other way Congress can provide oversight to the president. Truth is Congress can impeach for any reason they like because it is reviewable.
The new democrats do not debate!
In a sense, this effort may be of benefit to those who think before they vote (an unfortunately small minority, I fear). If you want to find out who are the Big Pharma lackey turncoats whom you need to vote against at your next opportunity, all that is required is to see who is supporting this impeachment. I have always disputed the rationality of the “the enemy of my enemies is my friend” paradigm, but “the enemy of my friends is my enemy” has always worked quite well for me.
JJC says: Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) appears to be standing up for the Tammany Hall democrats who have run HHS since the days of when it was called HEW. The Opiates MLD case in Ohio has revealed a lot of inside baseball stories about corruption in the pharma industry but none of it could have existed without the complicity of, you guess it, HHS.
Consider this one brief anecdote. Thirty years ago this month, the FDA’s division of Center for Drug Evaluation and Research approved OxyContin®, a long-acting form of oxycodone, a synthetic opiate drug as potent as morphine. The chief medical officer for the CDER’s task was Curtis Wright, MD. Court evidence show Wright was in private contact with Purdue Pharma, the drug’s sponsor, before the new drug application came before the CDER for approval.
One of the sticking points was a sentence is the drug’s label claiming that long-acting opioids have less abuse potential than short-acting ones. This was false and virtually all at the CDER table knew it or should have known it. The drug was approved and this sentence was used by the company’s sales force to convince doctors and patients that it was safe. They and Wright were wrong. More people have died from OxyContin abuse than have died in all the wars of the US since the Civil War. A simple fix in the tablet’s design as ordered years later might have saved many lives.
Wright subsequently retired from the FDA and two years after he pushed through the approval of OxyContin, he was hired as the Executive Director for Risk Assessment and Health Policy, wait for it, by PURDUE PHARMA. I wish I could say that what happened in this instance was a one-off but, unfortunately, there are too many similar stories of industry-wannabes doing favors to ingratiate themselves with their future employers. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) should study the facts before her. RFK, jr may be a little rough around the edges but, like his boss, the people prefer candor and honesty over corruption and duplicity.
“They and Wright were wrong. More people have died from OxyContin *abuse* . . .” (Emphasis added)
You buried the lede in your argument: “abuse.”
OxyContin, when taken by responsible people who follow prescription guidelines, gives those suffering from chronic, acute pain significant relief and a much better quality of life.
This is true, Sam, but the law (Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) requires the CDER (i.e., HHS & FDA) to weigh a drug’s benefits against its risks of abuse. Oxycodone was already approved long before OxyContin, so the FDA’s job was to approve the delivery system. This is where the system broke down and allowed bad science to take over and approve a tablet that proved to be easily crushed for misuse. Oxycodone’s use as a pain reliever was never in question, only its new delivery system. Subsequent criminal and civil trials showed this to be true, and Pursue Pharma is or has been in bankruptcy because of having to pay billions to settle claims that the company violated various statutes. Whether the drug was or is a good pain reliever is irrelevant and was never an issue in the abuse and fraud cases.
jjc – While not defending Big Pharma – the govenrment should have stayed out of the Oxycontin issue.
Frankly the FDA does more harm than good The entire reason we have Big Pharma rather than a more varried natural market is because Government makes drug approval so complex and expensive that only very large companies can manage it.
People do not grasp that the most significant supporters of govenrment regulation are Big Companies.
Free markets are brutal. They massively favor consumers over producers. the most successful producers rarely last long.
Look around the biggest companies in the world – Amazon, Microsoft Apple, NVidia have not been around all that long.
Many of the giants of 50 years ago – are gone or inconsequential. Where is Kodak Polaroid ?
AT&T is just one of many cell companies today.
Nothing appeals more to big business than becomeing a public utility – answerable to govenrment, not consumers.
Guaranteed continued existance forever.
Big business will ALWAYS seek regulation to create barriers to entry. The greatest threats to big business are NOT other big businesses, but paradigm shifting startups. 99% of these poses absolutely no threat to Big Business. But every single big business has its own origens story – and all the giants of today started in a garage somewhere decades ago. They know exactly where their future threat comes from.
“People do not grasp that the most significant supporters of govenrment regulation are Big Companies.
Free markets are brutal. They massively favor consumers over producers. the most successful producers rarely last long.”
Big companies also spend big on lobbying which is free speech. Big companies are also supported by Republicans. Who makes the rules? Big companies who spend the most to schmooze, wine and dine lawmakers with big free speech guaranteed donations. How does the consumer win against that when the consumer can barely afford to stay solvent except the wealthiest?
Free markets work when consumers are not treading water all the time and big companies are not fully in control of lobbying and multi million dollar political donations.
Ironically it was big companies who sent manufacturing jobs and supply chains to China because free market ideas of cheaper labor and better capacity.
“Big companies also spend big on lobbying which is free speech.”
Correct – but what do big companies lobby FOR – Rules that favor them.
Ultimately they lobby for more govenrment power – not less.
There would be absolutely no lobbiests at all if there was no govenrment power over the economy.
If you wish to get rid of rent seeking (lobbying) – all you need to do is reduce the power of govenrment over the economy.
The entire purpose of lobbying is to get government to use power that it should not have to pick winners and losers in areas it should be be involved it. That is called rent seeking.
“Big companies are also supported by Republicans.”
I really do not give a crap about the republican Democrat argument here – I am not a republican – I am a libertarains.
That said your claim is FALSE – the vast majority of political money from the wealth and from big business is directed towards democrats – not republicans. Why ? Because democrats sell favorable regulation – again – Rent Seeking.
“Who makes the rules? Big companies who spend the most to schmooze, wine and dine lawmakers with big free speech guaranteed donations.”
Absolutely – though you are idiotically pretending that politicians are some innocent scapegoats in this.
Nor is this about wining and dining. that is the LEAST consequential impact.
Those of you on the left tend to Hate landlords – which is stupid – landlords are the people who invest their wealth to provide homes for most of the people in the country. Even slumlords provide crappy homes to people who can not afford better.
Look arround – we have a homeless problem today. Why ? Because we have far too few crappy places that the poorest people can afford to live. Like it or not the only magic that makes what people want actually affodable over the long run is free markets.
Regardless, my point is that the left hates landlords.
Well that is precisely what government involvment in the economy is – Government as the landlord Renting what should be a right – the right to do as you deem well benefit you and consumers in the marketplace.
Our regulators, our politicians are not some innocents being wined and dined by lobbiests – they are people who crave the power they wield and constantly seek more and rent out that power to the highest bidder.
” How does the consumer win against that when the consumer can barely afford to stay solvent except the wealthiest?”
And yet the standard of living in the US has doubled approximaely every 20 years throughout my lifetime.
Further the standard of living throughout the world has doubled several times over in the same period.
In the 60’s Nuns at school beat us to put nickles in milk boxes to feed the starving chidren in Bangledesch.
Millions – even hundreds of millions accross the world were dying of starvation. Today we rant because a Factory fire in Banglesdesh kills a few hundred workers – as lamentable as that is – it is those factories that are why the starvation has ended.
Today all starvation globally is the consequence of politics.
There is not a single country in the entire world that is not capable of feeding itself with what it is capable of producing.
We have 2 and a half times more people than in 1965 they eat on average twice as much food as in 1965, which is produced on half as much land as in 1965. That is entirely the consequence of a global increase in economic freedom – free markets.
China has gone from a complete lack of freedom of any kind under Mao to significant economic freedom. It has gone from an agricultural country that was importing most of its food to an industrial country that exports food.
It has gone from nearly the lowest standard of living in the world to the bottom of the first world – from aveage real income of 300./yr to 11,000/yr. All the consequence of significantly increased economic freedom after Maos death.
The FACT is that your story about the weakness of consumers is a false myth.
Budweiser recently featured a MTF Trans on its core Beer, and the response by its market obliterated 25% of Anheiser Bush’s value as a company. Consumers are unbeleivably powerful – and always have been.
In 1983 when I got married I bough a top of the line Amana Refridgerator for $1200 wholesale.
Today I can go to any box store and buy a fridge that is far better than that Amana – that has Ice and water in the door, that has vegetable crispers and myriads of other features that Amana had not dreamed of in 1983 – and I can buy it for under $1000.
The price is LOWER in NOMINAL dollars – In real dollars todays refridgerators cost about 1/3 what they did in 1983.
Why are republicans starting to do so well with minorities ? Because the working class in the US is better off than it has ever been in history. The 4th quintile in the US – the working class is doing better than the 3rd Quintile – the middle class in Europe.
You rant that consumers have no power – but the FACT is that virtually everything is cheaper in real dollars today that when I was a teenager, and the majority of things are cheaper in nominal prices. The exceptions are those things that Government is moest heavily involved in. Health Care and education being the huge example.
If Govenrment regulation worked so well why is it that our worst problems are in those areas that govenrment has the most control ?
“Free markets work”
Period – always and everywhere – the freer the better they work – the data on that is absolutely damning.
China and india do NOT have free markets – but economic freedom in those countries is an order of magnitude greater than 50 years ago and the increase in stanard of living is phenomenal.
That has been repeated ALL OVER THE WORLD – the less economic freedom a country has the slower the rate of growth has been.
The more it has the faster it has been Even countries like China that are authoritarian and repressive have had explosive growth just because they have become LESS authoritarian and repressive.
” when consumers are not treading water all the time”
Consumers are not treading water all the time.
I do not know how old you are – but anyone who has been an adult for 20 years has observed a near doubling of their standard of living and nearly everyone around them. That happens so quietly few of us notice. But it absolutely happens.
“big companies are not fully in control of lobbying and multi million dollar political donations.”
The very good news is that despite the fact that Government is going pretty much the wrong direction with most everything.
We have enough economic freedom in this country that Freedom is growing faster than government.
We are both more free and less free than we were 50 years ago. We have both more laws and regulations governing our lives and more opportunities than ever before.
“Ironically it was big companies who sent manufacturing jobs and supply chains to China because free market ideas of cheaper labor and better capacity.”
Absolutely – and we are all better off for that – the Chinese are better off and people in other countries are better off.
The GDP of the US today is $30T US gdp in 1965 with about half the number of people was $750B.
We are better off – China is better off.
Today many of those jobs are leaving China – why ? because Chinese labor is no longer so incredbly low cost.
That means just like the US 50+ years ago – China must produce goods where the value add from the the labor is greater
it can not continue to produce low skill goods because doing so will not result in rising standard of living.
Low skill jobs are leavin China for other poor countries int he world.
Or they are leaving for the US – where the production of those goods will be highly automated – with very few low skill jobs ut more high skill and higher paying jobs.
Standard of living can only rise if you produce more value with less human labor. There is absolutely no other way to increase standard of living. The US has seen our GDP increase more than 30 fold – even adjusting for inflation that is still 4 fold or more – and that is the increase we have seen in our standard of living.
Regardless standard of living rises when you produce more value with less effort.
That is an immutable rule – in fact it is just basic math.
Sending low skill production to china decades ago was a very good idea that benefited china and the US.
Some of that is leaving China and returning to the US or going to even poorer countries – and that too is a good thing.
What matters is producing greater value at lower cost.
That is how standard of living rises.
There are a near infinite number of factors that determine the best way and the best place to produce anything – and those factors are dynamic and change over time.
But the objective is to produce more value for less cost.
That is the ONLY way that standard of living rises.
Free markets are the ONLY engine that we have ever found that reliably does that.
The problem the left has with them is they do not benefit everyone all the time, and they do not benefit everyone equally.
But over time they benefit everyone. Nothing else does that nearly so well.
Let me ask you something: If your standard of living doubles in the next 10 years – if the way you live improves, if the food you eat imporves if most everything about your life is twice as good as it was now.
Do you care if Elon Musk becomes worth $10T ?
Next – lets say that Musks net worth increases by a factor of 20 over the next 10 years.
Will his standard of living increase by a factor of 20 ? Will it increase by a factor of 2 ?
Will it increase at all ?
The uber rich can and likely will accumulate more “wealth” – but all that “wealth” will be invested.
It will be investing in making them even more money – that they can not possibly spend and that will have zero impact on their standard of living. But THEIR increased money WILL increase YOUR standard of living. Nearly all of Musk’s money is invested in producing cars, rockets, ….. All things that YOU or someone else wants – and is paying for, and all that require large numbers of high paying jobs to produce.
Musk has the midas touch – everything he touches turns to gold.
And it is YOU – US that benefits.
That said – I do not want Musk wasting money renting power from Government.
I want government out of his way so that he can spend that money improving my life.
With respect to Oxycontin and the Sacklers – I do not think there is anything all that unusual about the Sacklers.
Nor do I think Oxycontin would have lasted very long in truly free market.
There appears to be a legitimate case for “false advertising” by the Sacklers – beyond that their agressive efforts to sell a product are just the normal workings of a free market that get improperly demonized by the left all the time.
Further I am not entirely sold on the Oxycontin story as presented in the media.
You note that OxyContin can be crushed and abused by addicts – and that is true.
But the real problem awas not abuse by traditional drug addicts – but the structural arrangement created by Government and Big Pharma and the medical profession that made is easy for people to become addicts easily through little or no fault of their own.
Significant abuse of Oxycontin by the traditional population fo drug addicts was short lived.
Why ? Because in comparison to illegal drugs that are easier to abuse OxyContin was always expensive.
Heroine was cheaper than Oxy and Fentanyl today is cheaper than Heroine – and despite the fact that it is far more dangerous
and the high allegedly less satisfying – Fentanyl has driven nearly all other abused drugs to the fringes.
The huge problem for Oxycontin is that it was a gateway drug that could bring large numbers of people who would not otherwise become addicts into the world of drug addiction.
With further respect to OxyContin.
The story – whcih is correct is that the Saklers got greedy and the consequence was serius drug addiction even death in people who would not otherwise have become addicted.
That story is atleast partly true. It is also not unusual in free markets – but it is also NOT the whole story.
The story that OxyContin was bad is true. But it is also true that it was good. There are very large numbers of people who either suffer from chronic debilitating pain or who are terminal who actually benefited From Oxycontin and who were harmed as the Government became more restrictive.
One of the problems is that there are not one size fits all solutions to any of our problems,
and quite often even solutions that work to solve one problem create other problems – sometimes worse problems.
Government and regulation are abysmally bad at dealing with that.
The Saklers were absolutely correct that there was an underservered market of people who were in either chronic or terminal pain and that there was a huge market for a product that could help them.
They were also correct in trying to get arround govenrment regulations – because those interfered with delivering to people who were truly in need a product that would help them.
But serving the legitimate market for OxyContin had less beneficial consequences too.
The BEST solution would be private lawsuits – even class actions from those improperly harmed by the overly agressive marketing of OxyContin – and REASONABLE judgements against the Saklers by the courts.
That is not what we got.
If the govenrment has stayed out of it and courts had remained rational – The Saklers would have been forced to figure out how to serve their legitimate market while reducing the number of new addicts they unintentionally created.
Regardless – I do not care all that much about OxyContin or the Saklers.
My real point is that even in this allegedly egregious example of out of control corporate greed – the story is far more complex that what is told on TV and free markets have always done a better job than government of constraining the negative impacts of self interest and amplifying the positive ones.
“. . . a tablet that proved to be easily crushed for *misuse*.” (Emphasis added)
A gun can be easily pointed for misuse. A hammer can easily be held for misuse. A bed can be misused and abused, etc., ad nauseam.
That some misuse and abuse a product is not the proper foundation for liability or the law.