Welcome to John Howard's Redneck Wonderland

[Dinner]

Howard doesn't seem like such a terrible guy.

[Jethro83]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Howard doesn't seem like such a terrible guy.

Right, let's go off to the desert in South Australia and ask the refugees in mandatory detention, being held indefinitely in conditions unfit for rabid dogs what they think of John Howard. We should especially go ask the children among the families of these refugees who will be emotionally scarred for life by their experiences in our detention centres. He even lied about asylum seekers throwing their children overboard in the months before the 2001 election to maintain his image of a hardline stance on illegal immigrants.

And let's ask the parents of low income families who have no choice but to send their children to a dangerously underfunded public school, while the already wealthiest private schools in the country are receiving generous government funding AND STILL RAISING THEIR FEES!!!

And what about all of those bright, intelligent university students from low income families studying in already expensive courses like Medicine and Law who will no longer be able to afford to pay for their final year of study, and be forced to drop out and waste all of that beautiful talent in a dead end job, working off their debts from HECS, which "Honest" John "The Rodent" Howard raised. Why don't we ask them too?


Sorry if I'm not being tactful, but as an Australian who grew up watching The Rodent flush this country down the toilet, I can't really take any comment seriously when it is being said that "he's not so terrible" or "he's doing a great job" (exception to the latter being the 'have-mores' of society, who are quite possibly the only people to truly benefit from The Rodent's reign). I even fell to the floor laughing to tears when The Rodent first came out at the beginning of the campaign asking the rhetorical question of "Who do you trust?"

So much for the "Clever Country"

[Zevico]

Please...Aussies have always had an image problem...if we're not all Crocodile Dundees then we're all "Aussie Battlers" a la The Castle. We're never rednecks, no clue where you got that from.

[GePap]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
No, it's the market establishing the price, as opposed to some government functionary arbitrarily setting a "fair" price. Walmart is big, but it's not all-powerful, and it can't dictate the terms.

Of course Walmart can- Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world- if Walmart does not carry your item, you will make far less money than if they did- that means power. Walmart does have the power to make demands of distributers, and they do. All huge retailers do.

You are also worng about the notion that what is being proposed is "price controls"- the government wants to use its greater buying power to negotiate a lower price-which is different from setting its price.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
And where is the government fixing prices in the process of buying drugs? It's just getting the big buyer discount, which I'm sure a lot of drug companies would be willing to compete over to have the government (or parts of it) as a client.

If the goverment effectively becomes the monopoly buyer, the price it sets become the effective market price. We have seen this with vaccines. The result with vaccines is well known, chronic shortages and rationing.

WalMart is hardly a monopoly buyer nationwide, but I will grant you that its prices in a local are can be the effective price because of its local market dominance.

The antitrust laws are intended to prevent monopolies precisely due to their adverse affects on markets. I fully endorse both the letter and spirit of those laws. It appears that Democrats, in contrast, actually favor monopolies, so long as they are state monopolies.

Socialism anyone?

[Imran Siddiqui]

The antitrust laws are intended to prevent monopolies precisely due to their adverse affects on markets. I fully endorse both the letter and spirit of those laws. It appears that Democrats, in contrast, actually favor monopolies, so long as they are state monopolies.

Socialism anyone?

So you want to auction off the Army to private bidders? After all, state monopolies are bad, right?

And who is saying the government is setting a price in buying drugs. If having drug companies compete to provide the best price is 'setting a price' then perhaps the term isn't so bad . And you seem to act like the government is buying drugs for everyone, no matter what perscription drug coverage you have. This is decidedly not the case.

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk


No, it's the market establishing the price, as opposed to some government functionary arbitrarily setting a "fair" price. Walmart is big, but it's not all-powerful, and it can't dictate the terms.

Actually, walmart does dictate to a large number of its suppliers the price they pay. This come from working for both walmart and one of those suppliers. For a lot of the suppliers, walmart has them by the balls..

[Ned]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

The antitrust laws are intended to prevent monopolies precisely due to their adverse affects on markets. I fully endorse both the letter and spirit of those laws. It appears that Democrats, in contrast, actually favor monopolies, so long as they are state monopolies.

Socialism anyone?

So you want to auction off the Army to private bidders? After all, state monopolies are bad, right?

And who is saying the government is setting a price in buying drugs. If having drug companies compete to provide the best price is 'setting a price' then perhaps the term isn't so bad . And you seem to act like the government is buying drugs for everyone, no matter what perscription drug coverage you have. This is decidedly not the case.

If Kerry's plan is anything like the way the gov't handles vaccines, the government will be the monopoly buyer for drugs.

Expect shortages, rationing and vastly less investment in new drug R&D. In otherword, a f*cking catastrophe.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Ned


If Kerry's plan is anything like the way the gov't handles vaccines, the government will be the monopoly buyer for drugs.

Expect shortages, rationing and vastly less investment in new drug R&D. In otherword, a f*cking catastrophe.

Yes, the government should be making its own supplies fo vaccines instead of trusting private contractors to do it. As for less investment in R&D, only if right-wing nuts (like yourself) decide its not worth tax money to do so.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
No, it's the market establishing the price,

Woo-oo-oo-oo, the market (say that while wiggling your fingers). The market isn't some holy sacred object that just saying the wod somehow makes it okay. Markets are easily pushed around by monopolies and oligopolies. Wal-mart has such market influence that a large amount of entertainment is made strictly according to that one company's standards.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I've heard that lots of Australian guys leave the country to find work thus leaving the country full of hot chicks. Maybe I need to move to Australia for a couple of years.

You'd be dissappointed methinks. You wanna go to Ireland.

[Ned]

Originally posted by GePap


Yes, the government should be making its own supplies fo vaccines instead of trusting private contractors to do it. As for less investment in R&D, only if right-wing nuts (like yourself) decide its not worth tax money to do so.

GePap, have you any f*cking concept of the complete lunacy of what you just said? You are proposing a complete government takeover of drug R&D and manufacturing. (I, of course, recognize that this is a necessary consequence of Kerry's PLAN!!!)

And you call ME and NUTCASE!!!