The first time I read Atlas Shrugged (disclaimer: yes, you could cut a couple of hundred pages out of it and liven up a goodly part of it and it still would be impactful), DCE at Weekend Pundit said I’d need anti-depressants for the first 100 pages as it was at the beginning of Obama’s first term – and now at his third term, I don’t dare pick it up again.
Straight Out of Atlas Shrugged: Biden Will Waive Patents on Vaccines, Enraging Big Pharma.
It’s for the Collective good, doncha know!
On the Sunday Show This Week with Stephy was when I first heard about it when Jake Sullivan, White House National Security Advisor blurted it out:
We believe that the pharmaceutical companies should be supplying, at scale and at cost to the entire world so that there is no barrier to everyone getting vaccinated.
He further stated that the Administration is working with the World Trade Organization to effectively take away the Intellectual Property patents held by the WuFlu vaccine makers and just given them away. I just sat there, horrified. Certainly there are other ways of handling this but if THIS Administration isn’t going to respect the private property of these companies (and Intellectual Property is property just as clearly as the stuff in your home or apartment or in you bank account), you really think they’re going to respect YOURS?
To Bruce Currie’s dismay, this IS straight out of Atlas Shrugged happening in real-time in that current Socialist encroachment holds that EVERYONE should be a stakeholder / owner in everything. Things ended badly by the end of the book (which Currie holds to be absurd even as we’ve been watching it happen in real time in Socialism-in-Venezuela). We saw it when Obama effectively applied Fascism principles and took over the Big Three auto companies and tore them apart and put hundreds of auto dealerships with valid contracts out of business (“You don’t need that” turned into “WE, as Society, don’t need that”).
Yet another “crisis” being used for political purposes. After all, the Declaration of Independence, the basis of American governance, made it clear:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Property.
Yeah, I know – Happiness. It was originally Property as at that time, Property WAS partly defined as Happiness. Our NH Constitution makes it far clearer:
[Art.] 2. [Natural Rights.] All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights among which are, the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting, property; and, in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by this state on account of race, creed, color, sex or national origin.
The Fifth Amendment:
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Yet, that is EXACTLY what the Biden Administration isn’t just PROPOSING to do, it actually IS ACTIVELY doing it to these private companies (AstraZenica, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, to name three in the news for having [experimental usage] approval. I guess Doddering Joe learned something while being Veep – or the Obama retreads have convinced him (YOUCH!) that the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few (a little Star Trek Socialism there).
Big Pharma has been taking it on the chin for years, thanks to Communist Bernie. Yet, for all the drug-grabbers kvetching, not ONE of them has had the stones to create their own company with their own money (or investers) and do exactly what they are demanding of these private companies.
So, we see outright Fascism by the Biden Administration in trying to wrest control by “legal” means to control the means of [vaccine] production and effectively taking away ownership of the stockholders and making it a Governmental utility.
Subsequent to the Sunday show, Biden’s Administration has repeated that this is what they intend to do. Where is the outrage by the Congressional Republicans? Of private ownership advocates? The Anti-Socialists? The Capitalists?
People may not like Big Pharma but like what happened (ficti
(H/T: Instapundit)
UPDATE:
https://nypost.com/2021/05/06/shares-of-covid-vaccine-makers-fall-after-us-backs-ip-waiver/