American AM - Talk radio for the rest of us

Click here for printable view of article

Article published May 16, 2005
New life for drug imports?
Changes in the Senate mean the barriers might be removed

By CORY REISS
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON -- Dulcy Kushmore says she was stunned after tallying the amounts her company saved its 2,000 customers last year by helping them buy prescription drugs from Canada.

She said the savings of $650,000 last year for clients of Canada Med Services, based in Sarasota, meant many seniors could finally afford their medicines.

"To tell me that importing meds from Canada is dangerous -- compare that to people not taking their meds, not being able to afford their meds, and they die," Kushmore said. "That's dangerous."

Older Americans continue to flock to such storefront services and the Internet, and more state governments are considering joining the five that now import drugs from Canada and Britain.

That means more and more seniors are technically outlaws as legislation to legalize importing U.S.-made drugs from Canada and other countries, where they are cheaper, sits in the Senate. Discounts on imported drugs can be as high as 50 percent.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

The German economic miracle
By Henry C K Liu

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE24Dj01.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE24Dj01.html

PART 10: Nazism and the German economic miracle
By Henry C K Liu

Erhard's close associates, economist Alfred Mueller-Armack, who served as secretary of state at the Economics Ministry in Bonn from 1958-63. Mueller-Armack defined social market economy as combining market freedom with social equity, with a vigilant regulatory regime to create an equitable framework for free market processes. The success of the social market economy made the Federal Republic of Germany the dominant component in the European Union. Focusing on the social aspect, Erhard himself shied away from praising free markets. He felt that social rules of the market-economy game must be adhered to as a precondition in order to prevent unbridled pursuit of profit from gaining the upper hand.

Erhard's concept of a socially responsive regulated market economy was based on a fusion of the Bismarck legacy of social welfare and US New Deal ideology of demand management through full employment, price control, state subsidies, anti-trust regulations, state control of monetary stability, etc. It was aided by the infusion of foreign capital through the Marshall Plan. It proved to be effective for rapid and strong recovery of the West German economy via guaranteed access to the huge US market during the Cold War, culminating in the postwar economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder).

Yet Erhard's program bore a close resemblance to the early economic strategy of the Third Reich. The main difference was that while the Third Reich's program was one of economic nationalism, the Erhard program was subservient to US geopolitical interests in the context of the Cold War. By relying on US capital and US markets, chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Erhard accepted the delay of German independence from US domination for more than half a century. In contrast, Nazi economic policy aimed at the reconstruction of the German economy without the need for foreign capital, as a program for total and immediate national independence.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Charles McKenzie and Sarasota Dave after a successful fundraiser for the six Haile Middle School students an their trip to Washington, D.C. .

Monday, May 02, 2005

http://atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GD22Aa01.html

THE NEW AMERICAN MILITARISM
The normalization of war
By Andrew J Bacevich

At the end of the Cold War, Americans said "yes" to military power. The skepticism about arms and armies that pervaded the American experiment from its founding vanished. Political leaders, liberals and conservatives alike, became enamored with military might.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GD26Aa01.html

THE NEW AMERICAN MILITARISM
New boys in town
By Andrew J Bacevich
Previous excerpt: The normalization of war

In our own time - and especially since the ascendancy of George W Bush to the presidency - "neo-conservative" has become a term of opprobrium, frequently accompanied by ad hominem attacks and charges of arrogance and hubris. But the heat generated by the term also stands as a backhanded tribute, an acknowledgment that the neo-conservative impact has been substantial. It is today too soon to offer a comprehensive assessment of that impact. The discussion of neo-conservatism offered here has a more modest objective, namely, to suggest that one aspect of the neo-conservative legacy has been to foster the intellectual climate necessary for the emergence of the new American militarism.