Tag: Donald Trump

Sweden’s embrace of refugees isn’t working and the US should learn from their mistakes

Sweden’s embrace of refugees isn’t working and the US should learn from their mistakes

 

Excellent article for anyone that is interested in the challenges of integrating a disenfranchised people into a culture and economy that they are not familiar with and are not prepared for.

Please read the article in the Source below but here are a few highlights:

The effects are palpable, starting with national security. An estimated 300 Swedish citizens with immigrant backgrounds have traveled to the Middle East to fight for Islamic State. Many are now returning to Sweden and are being welcomed back with open arms by our socialist government. In December 2010 we had our first suicide attack on Swedish soil, when an Islamic terrorist tried to blow up hundreds of civilians in central Stockholm while they were shopping for Christmas presents. Thankfully the bomber killed only himself.

Riots and social unrest have become a part of everyday life. Police officers, firefighters and ambulance personnel are regularly attacked. Serious riots in 2013, involving many suburbs with large immigrant populations, lasted for almost a week. Gang violence is booming. Despite very strict firearm laws, gun violence is five times as common in Sweden, in total, as in the capital cities of our three Nordic neighbors combined.

Anti-Semitism has risen. Jews in Malmö are threatened, harassed and assaulted in the streets. Many have left the city, becoming internal refugees in their country of birth.

The number of sex crimes nearly doubled from 2014-15, according to surveys by the Swedish government body for crime statistics. One-third of Swedish women report that they no longer feel secure in their own neighborhoods, and 12% say they don’t feel safe going out alone after dark. A 1996 report from the same government body found that immigrant men were far likelier to commit rape than Swedish men. Last year our party asked the minister of justice to conduct a new report on crime and immigration, and he replied: “In light of previous studies, I do not see that a further report on recorded crime and individuals’ origins would add knowledge with the potential to improve the Swedish society.”

Mr. Åkesson is party chairman of the Sweden Democrats. Mr. Karlsson is the party’s group leader in Parliament. They finish this article with the following quote that is significant:

For the sake of the American people, with whom we share so many strong historical and cultural ties, we can only hope that the leaders in Washington won’t make the same mistakes that our socialist and liberal politicians did.

Source: Trump Is Right: Sweden’s Embrace of Refugees Isn’t Working – WSJ

Foreign Countries Freeload on U.S. Drug Research and Drive Up Costs for American Consumers

Foreign Countries Freeload on U.S. Drug Research and Drive Up Costs for American Consumers

Because foreign countries can import new U.S. drugs and price them however they see fit, many have largely checked out of the innovation business themselves. The U.S. produced 57% of the world’s new medicines between 2001 and 2010, up from less than a third in the 1970s, the Milken Institute reported in 2011.

The bottom line is that foreign countries freeload off American medical innovation, enjoying the fruits of U.S. ingenuity while forcing American consumers to shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden of funding research – effectively causing the American consumer to subsidize the pharmaceutical needs of foreign consumers.

President Trump says American companies have been getting “systematically ripped off” by foreign governments and firms. He’s right. Yet he has backed a proposal that would make the problem even worse—permitting Americans to buy prescription drugs from overseas retailers, a practice known as importation. This policy wouldn’t help American consumers much, but it would gut American pharmaceutical companies.

Importation would threaten the research-and-development efforts that yield new lifesaving drugs. Our strong intellectual-property laws, coupled with a comparatively free-market pricing system, encourage firms to research new treatments. Companies wouldn’t take on the enormous cost of developing a new drug without a solid chance of recouping their investment. On average, a new medicine takes 10 years and costs $2.6 billion to develop, according to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development.

The problem is that rather than promote innovation, many other countries impose price controls on prescription drugs—including new medicines invented in the United States—to make them artificially cheaper for consumers. If American companies refuse to sell their medicines at these steeply discounted dictated prices, foreign countries threaten to break their patents and produce knockoff versions of the medicines.

For decades, federal officials have largely ignored these threats and left American research companies to fend for themselves. U.S. companies gave in to the bullying—quite understandably. Since they already spent the money to develop the drug, they figured it’s better to make some extra sales abroad, even if those sales are at a discount and they can rely on the American consumer for the majority of their per dose profit.

Foreign price controls succeed because they are carried on the back of the American consumer. The American consumer subsidizes the cost of foreign pharmaceutical costs making US healthcare costs higher while lowering the healthcare costs of foreign consumers.

The Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015 requires the federal government to negotiate trade deals that “achieve the elimination of government measures such as price controls and reference pricing which deny full market access for United States products.” Mr. Trump might actually have the negotiating skills to turn that goal into reality.

If Mr. Trump wants to “bend the cost curve of healthcare” as Mr. Obama promised (and failed) then ending the subsidy of foreign consumers should be high on his list.

Source: How Other Countries Freeload on U.S. Drug Research – WSJ

The Costs of Mass Deportation

The Costs of Mass Deportation

One of the more foolish statements of Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump (the two least qualified candidates in the race) is their love of saying that they would deport anyone here illegally. I am sorry but I simply do not want to pay that much in taxes to do that and if their supporters could actually use a calculator, they wouldn’t want it either.

My gut is that Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump would both renege on this campaign promise. Mr. Trump calls Mr. Cruz “Lying Ted” in this regard, Mr. Trump is correct but the bad news is that Lying Ted should call the Republican nomination current leader, Lying Donald. Thank goodness Mr. Kasich understands how to do math and has a reasonable agenda.

After the roundups, where would the arrested millions await their hearings? The feds currently operate about 250 detention facilities with 34,000 beds, and a mere 58 immigration courts. The average detention time is 28.7 days. To keep that same detention time, a two-year deportation plan would require some 348,831 beds, as well as more than 1,300 courts and about 30,000 more federal attorneys. The effort would be a full-employment act for lawyers, and no doubt the House Freedom Caucus would be overjoyed to pay for all of those new federal employees.

Then there’s the task of sending migrants back to their native countries. Only about half of the 11.3 million hail from nearby Mexico, so the U.S. would have to fly millions to Central America, Asia and elsewhere. The effort would demand the departure, on average, of 84 buses and 47 chartered flights every day for two years. Is the Trump 757 available?

Source: The Costs of Mass Deportation

Was Carly Fiorina a failed CEO?

Was Carly Fiorina a failed CEO?

 

Criticisms that Carly Fiorina is the worst technology CEO of all time fall extremely short of reality.

Many will read this article and believe that I will support Carly Fiorina in the election for the President of the United States of America. I honestly do not know if that is where I will cast my vote. I live in Ohio and at the time of this writing, I have several months to decide whom to vote for in the Republican primaries. I then have several more months to decide to vote for Ms. Fiorina in the general election should she win the Republican nomination.

What I do know is that criticisms that she is the worst technology CEO of all time fall extremely short of reality. Was she the best CEO? Absolutely not. But accusations that Ms. Fiorina was terrible simply do not hold water for any reasonable analysis of the market HP was in, the state of HP at the time, and the board that she worked with at the time.

Source: Was Carly Fiorina a failed CEO?