The left is up in arms over the pharmaceutical CEO who raised prices for a drug mostly used by AIDS patients by more than 5,000 percent, but experts CNBC interviewed said regulatory barriers helped make it possible.
Founder and CEO of Turing Pharmaceutical, Martin Shkreli bought the generic drug Daraprim, which is used for parasitic infections in pregnant women and immunocompromised individuals. He hiked its cost from $13.50 a pill to $750, a whopping 5,455 percent.
Hooray! The Gross Domestic Product shrank by 2.9% in the first quarter of the year. "This recovery is underway."
Your humble correspondent was very careful to put the previous sentence in quotes because I don't want you to think I've taken leave of my senses. This amazing conclusion comes to us courtesy of CNN Money spinmeister Annalyn Kurtz who starts out on a rather gloomy note but manages to spin her way into economic joy:
Last month, CNN reported that the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis measured a decrease in the rate of growth of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) to the tune of 0.1 percent. But relax, they insisted, it was merely due to the “winter weather effect.”
Fast forward to today and the Bureau’s downward revision of GDP growth. The feds now tell us the economy contracted one percent in the first quarter. Yes, this is “the first downturn since 2011," CNNMoney noted but, hey, “it’s not a big deal,” according to the network’s dismissive headline.
Apparently CNN’s LGBT activism has found its way onto its financial website CNN Money. In a February 22 article, writer Blake Ellis featured numerous transgendered individuals struggling to find work in America.
The article serves as a means to promote transgendered rights and Ellis claims that, “as millions of Americans struggle with unemployment, this community is being hit especially hard.” Numerous transgendered individuals are profiled to show the supposed struggles they experience.
Proudly claiming the legendary outlaw Robin Hood as their inspiration, liberal groups and past Occupy Wall Street supporters are pushing for a “Robin Hood Tax” on corporate transactions. George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, Bill Moyers’s Schumann Center for Media and Democracy and the liberal Tides Foundation and Proteus Fund have given over $4 million to organizations that support the tax, according to the official Robin Hood Tax website.
Support for The Robin Hood Tax has come from both Europe and the United States. Although they haven’t gotten specific about which corporate transactions would be taxed, advocates claim such a tax would raise hundreds of billions of dollars, which could then be used to promote social programs or climate change prevention initiatives. Many of its proponents also have ties to the Occupy Wall Street movement.