#political institutions

[blackswaneuroparedux]

An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public.

- Talleyrand

British politics. Dear oh dear.

#talleyrand #politics #quote #institutions #political institutions #politicians #culture #society #corruption #british politics #number 10

[quillsword]

Is the European Union Democratic?

No, of course not. It’s a bureaucracy. You need details, huh? They really don’t teach you college kids much for all that money they charge you, do they? Any word ending in -cracy refers to what governs. Democracy just means the people govern – there aren’t any true democracies. Autocracy means a single person has full governing power. Think ‘despot’ but that’s just the usual outcome. Benevolent…

View On WordPress

#Democracy #Democratic deficit #EU governance #EU politics #European democracy #European integration #European politics #European Union #Governance #Political institutions

[howdoesone]

How does one examine the relationship between political institutions and the likelihood of genocide?

The relationship between political institutions and the likelihood of genocide is a critical area of study within political science. Understanding how political institutions shape societal dynamics and contribute to the risk of genocide is essential for preventing and mitigating such atrocities. This article examines how one can examine the relationship between political institutions and the…

View On WordPress

#Accountability #authoritarian regimes #democratization #ethnic politics #exclusion #genocide #human rights #inclusive governance #inclusive institutions #international criminal justice #justice #likelihood #peace #polarization #political identity #political institutions #post-conflict institutions #power dynamics #power-sharing arrangements #prevention #relationship #rule of law #specialized tribunals #transitional justice #truth and reconciliation commissions

[reasonsforhope]

"The Biden Administration last week [early December, 2023] announced it would be seizing patents for drugs and drug manufacturing procedures developed using government money.

A draft of the new law, seen by Reuters, said that the government will consider various factors including whether a medical situation is leading to increased prices of the drug at any given time, or whether only a small section of Americans can afford it.

The new executive order is the first exercise in what is called “march-in-rights” which allows relevant government agencies to redistribute patents if they were generated under government funding. The NIH has long maintained march-in-rights, but previous directors have been unwilling to use them, fearing consequences.

“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.

But just how much taxpayer money is going toward funding drugs? A research paper from the Insitute for New Economic Thought showed that “NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $230 billion.”

The authors of the paper continue, writing “NIH funding also produced 22 thousand patents, which provided marketing exclusivity for 27 (8.6%) of the drugs approved [between] 2010-2019.”

How we do drug discovery and production in America has a number of fundamental flaws that have created problems in the health service industry.

It costs billions of dollars and sometimes as many as 5 to 10 years to bring a drug to market in the US, which means that only companies with massive financial muscle can do so with any regularity, and that smaller, more innovative companies can’t compete with these pharma giants.

This also means that if a company can’t recoup that loss, a single failed drug can result in massive disruptions to business. To protect themselves, pharmaceutical companies establish piles of patents on drugs and drug manufacturing procedures. Especially if the drug in question treats a rare or obscure disease, these patents essentially ensure the company has monoselective pricing regimes.

However, if a company can convince the NIH that a particular drug should be considered a public health priority, they can be almost entirely funded by the government, as the research paper showed.

Some market participants, in this case the famous billionaire investor Mark Cuban, have attempted to remedy the issue of drug costs in America by manufacturing generic versions of patented drugs sold for common diseases."

-via Good News Network, December 11, 2023

#united states #us politics #biden administration #executive order #prescription drugs #medical news #healthcare #healthcare access #biden #big pharma #drug prices #public health #nih #national institutes of health #good news #hope

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

*tries to organize my thoughts*

*remembers i'm not in school and therefore beholden to neither heaven nor hell nor any man's grading system*

*joyously shredding & tossing all my carefully arranged 3x5 mental notecards into the air like so much beige confetti. raising my arms in victory, cheering raucously until i accidentally inhale bits of homemade confetti*

(*coughing up itty bits of paper like a cat evicting a hairball with a firm understanding of tenants' rights*) wait wat happens next

#i marie kondoed my thoughts and *i* feel great. but now my stream-of-consciousness has escaped containment #so many innocent bystanders at stake #every time i try to organize my thoughts i run out of plastic bins and have to make a trip to the container store where i get even more dis #racted so. you can't just hand me THIS brain and NO catalogue OR library classification system #and expect me to single-handedly sort through all this nonsense? bad form but fucking form not in my job description #aNYways. formal education sure did a FUCKING NUMBER on us huh #(a number i measure not in gpa or dollars of student debt. #but in the number of therapy sessions & medical debt it will take to recover.) #seriously folks. our education systems are...innately traumatizing for a huge number of students. and we NEED to address this. #the fact that it is culturally common for adults to have anxiety nightmares about school/exams...even decades later? #that is not cute. it is Alarming. #no one--much less entire generations--should be spending their developmental years in an environment of chronic stress & pressure & strain #and yet that is the reality for millions and millions of pre-teen and teenage and young adult students #this isn't healthy and it serves and empowers NO ONE #...except of course the many exploitative educational & financial & debt-collecting institutions thriving from the current balance of power #and of course it's a nefarious and powerful way to sabotage/erase the middle class #which billionaires and the wealth-inequality creators they finance couldn't possibly have any noteworthy interest in whatsoever #it's not like there's an elite group of people with huge financial incentives to drain/steal resources from the masses... #anyways sorry for going all Conspiracy Theory on you. #obviously the billionaires who control the vast majority of our resources and news and political campaign funding #are not tied to every single itty bitty social issue and i'm a silly billy to imply it #please tell elon musk to ignore this tweet i am so subservient and acquiescent #mr musky u r so good at inheriting slavery-built mining fortunes & buying other people's companies #& building rocket ships & fancy cars that do NOT explode/catch fire & also NOT running billion dollar companies into the ground #mr musky u r so talented genius billionaire playboy with 10 kids and ex-wives who find you creepy af babe u r basically iron man

[sare11aa11eras]

You walk into the Night’s Watch in 300 AC and THIS is the first thing you see, wyd?

#asoiaf #valyrianscrolls #my art #jon snow #mormont’s raven #ghost #it’s been so long since I did a stupid little doodle of jonny icicle <3 #(by crazy I mean will chop your head off and dreams of affecting massive political change in a dying institution)

[hometownrockstar]

I hate the argument abt when you say customizable games should have fat people and people say "well it would be harder to model or scale clothes to fit" cause like i guess youre technically right, but why then are fat people not seen as worth the effort to actually code and model these things? Someone else said this abt baldur's gate but they said "in an RPG like that game shouldn't the priority be on allowing people to express themselves as much as possible with designing their character?" Also like fat people aren't a rarity or minority, even if all media ever wants to give people the impression that the world is 99% skinny people with maybe one or two fat villains or sidekick friends.

#A lottt of arguments against including or accommodating fat people eventually boil down to #Continuing to believe fatness is a choice. And therefore the burden to change should be on them to lose weight #Rather than for institutions or society or other people to put in the effort to humanize and accommodate fat people #Fat politics

[pinktinselmonstrosity]

i hate rishi sunak as much as the next person but i do feel bad for him having to read from the gospels at the coronation........ they keep saying that "all faiths and beliefs" are included but our Hindu prime minister still has to do a reading from the Christian bible huh

#i know i know it's all a farce #but i am struck by just how intensely christian it is despite the constant claims of multifaith considerations #like. do they not see how intensely hypocritical it is to keep saying that charles will serve the british people of all faiths and beliefs #and then immediately say ''in the name of jesus christ'' #i have such a secular existence that i do sometimes forget how seriously christian the institutions of this country are #it's weird #and i'm saying that as someone who is simply not religious at all #i'm sure it's much worse for people who follow a religion other than christianity #🧃 #uk politics

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

The “enormously powerful Atlas Network, a global network of more than 500 member think tanks advocating for “free market” policies.”

Started by Antony Fisher and his Institute of Economic Affairs in the UK. It went worldwide with assistance from the Koch family and Rupert Murdoch, along with funding from big oil companies.

☝️👏🤯

#institute of economic affairs #IEA #Atlas Network #Koch family foundations #Rupert Murdoch #big oil #climate denial #Antony fisher #republican hypocrisy #republican assholes #republican family values #republican values #oligarchs #global conspiracy #right wing politics #climate change #climate Justice #climate and environment #climate change denial

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday will honor Emmett Till, the Black teenager whose 1955 killing helped galvanize the Civil Rights movement, and his mother with a national monument across two states.

Till, 14 and visiting from Chicago, was beaten, shot and mutilated in Money, Mississippi, on Aug. 28, 1955, four days after a 21-year-old white woman accused him of whistling at her. His body was dumped in a river.

The violent killing put a spotlight on the U.S. civil rights cause after his mother, Mamie Till-Bradley, held an open-casket funeral and a photo of her son's badly disfigured body appeared in Black media.

The national monument designation across 5.7 acres (2.3 hectares) and three sites marks a forceful new effort by the President to memorialize the country's bloody racial history even as Republicans in some states push limits on how that past is taught.

"America is changing, America is making progress," said the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., 84, a cousin of Till's who was with the boy on the night he was abducted at gunpoint from the relatives' house they were staying at in Mississippi.

"I've seen a lot of changes over the years and I try to tell young people that they happen, but they happen very slow," Parker said on Monday in a telephone interview as he traveled from Chicago to Washington to attend the signing ceremony at the White House as one of approximately 60 guests.

Tuesday marks the 82nd anniversary of Till's birth in 1941. One of the monument sites is the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, where Till's funeral took place.

The other selected sites are in Mississippi: Graball Landing, close to where Till's body is believed to be have been recovered; and Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, where two white men who later confessed to Till's killing were acquitted by an all-white jury.

Signs erected at Graball Landing since 2008 to commemorate Till's killing have been repeatedly defaced by gunfire.

Now that site and the others will be considered federal property, receiving about $180,000 a year in funding from the National Park Service. Any future vandalism would be investigated by federal law enforcement rather than local police, according to Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi.

Other such monuments include the Grand Canyon, Statue of Liberty and the laboratory of inventor Thomas Edison.

Biden, an 80-year-old Democrat, will likely need strong support from Black voters to secure a second term in the 2024 presidential election.

He screened a film recounting the lynching, "Till," at the White House in February. Last March, he signed into law a bipartisan bill named for Till that for the first time made lynching a federal hate crime.

A Republican field led by former President Donald Trump has made conservative views on race and other contentious issues of history a part of their platform, including banning books and fighting efforts to teach school children accounts of the country's past that they regard as ideologically inflected or unpatriotic.

"This is an amazing, teachable moment to talk about the importance of this story as an American story that everybody can share in now, particularly at a time when people are trying to rewrite history," said Christopher Benson, president of the non-profit organization the Emmett Till & Mamie Till-Mobley Institute in Summit, Illinois.

“We have a memorial now that is not erasable. It can't be banned and it can't be censored, and we think that's a very important thing.”

#us politics #news #reuters #2023 #biden administration #president joe biden #Emmett Till #national monuments #Mississippi #Illinois #Mamie Till-Bradley #civil rights movement #Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. #Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ #Graball Landing #Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse #Patrick Weems #Emmett Till Interpretive Center #Christopher Benson #Emmett Till & Mamie Till-Mobley Institute #racism #white supremacists #white supremacy #lynching

[odinsblog]

🗣️This is an illegitimate and deeply corrupt Supreme Court. Vote every Republican & conservative politician out of office in 2024

WASHINGTON (AP) — One woman miscarried in the lobby restroom of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to check her in. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn't offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.

Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, federal documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal.

The cases raise alarms about the state of emergency pregnancy care in the U.S., especially in states that enacted strict abortion laws and sparked confusion around the treatment doctors can provide.

“It is shocking, it’s absolutely shocking,” said Amelia Huntsberger, an OB/GYN in Oregon. “It is appalling that someone would show up to an emergency room and not receive care — this is inconceivable.”

It's happened despite federal mandates that the women be treated.

Federal law requires emergency rooms to treat or stabilize patients who are in active labor and provide a medical transfer to another hospital if they don’t have the staff or resources to treat them. Medical facilities must comply with the law if they accept Medicare funding.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday that could weaken those protections. The Biden administration has sued Idaho over its abortion ban, even in medical emergencies, arguing it conflicts with the federal law.

“No woman should be denied the care she needs,” Jennifer Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council, said in a statement. “All patients, including women who are experiencing pregnancy-related emergencies, should have access to emergency medical care required under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).”

PREGNANCY CARE AFTER ROE

Pregnant patients have “become radioactive to emergency departments” in states with extreme abortion restrictions, said Sara Rosenbaum, a George Washington University health law and policy professor

“They are so scared of a pregnant patient, that the emergency medicine staff won’t even look. They just want these people gone," Rosenbaum said.

Consider what happened to a woman who was nine months pregnant and having contractions when she arrived at the Falls Community Hospital in Marlin, Texas, in July 2022, a week after the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion. The doctor on duty refused to see her.

(continue reading)

#politics #republicans #abortion #reproductive rights #healthcare #roe v wade #reproductive justice #femicide #misogyny #war on women #republicans are evil #the cruelty is the point #election 2024 #scotus #the supreme court is an illegitimate and deeply corrupt institution #religious reich #christian nationalism

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

I want to write a little bit about structural racism in the UK against Travellers, and the Labour Party's complicity with this because I think it might help explain why that letter from Diane Abbott disturbed me so much.

Romani and Irish Travellers in the UK experience discrimination all the time. They'll be barred from shops and pubs, they experience discrimination from the police, they experience racial abuse. If they are living a nomadic lifestyle, they struggle to access schools and hospitals. Educational outcomes for Romani students are the worst in England by a large margin, followed by Irish Travellers. They're also over represented in the prison population compared to the proportion of the general population they make up.

Irish Travellers are generally "white/white passing" although they are a distinct ethnic group from the settled Irish. However, not all Romani people are "white passing" and some see themselves as PoC. Both groups have fought for a long time to be recognised officially as ethnic minorities and to gain legal protections.

In 2022, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts act was passed. This is the "bill" that was the focus of the "kill the bill" protests, and lots was written about the restrictions it placed on protestors. However, part 4 of the bill related to unauthorised encampments. Although the law does not specifically name any ethnic groups, it effectively criminalises the traditional nomadic traveller lifestyle.

It creates an offence of residing in a vehicle (this would include a caravan) on land without permission. It allows the police to seize the vehicle, even prior to the offence being committed. It allows the police to impose fines and prison sentences.

Although the bill itself does not name any particular ethnic group, much of the advice and communication around the bill does. This is because it's clearly designed to target certain groups who live a traditional nomadic lifestyle. It's designed to make them homeless, and force them into housing- essentially forced assimilation. The British have been trying to do this to Romani and Irish Travellers for centuries.

This law was passed by the Tories, but one thing people don't know is that Starmer whipped the Labour party against most sections of the bill. He allowed a free vote on Section 4- the section that specifically related to "unauthorised encampments".

Around the same time, in 2021, his party produced local election leaflets which mentioned "traveller incursions"- eventually they admitted the leaflets were racist and destroyed them. It's not the first time, and won't be the last, that Labour use racism against these groups to win points with the electorate.

In this context, Abbott is part of a system which is systematically discriminating against Romani and Irish Travellers- yes, Labour aren't the party in power, but they are a part of the system enabling this to happen.

So, I read her letter in that context. I read her minimisation of the struggles of the most marginalised ethnic groups in our society in that context (I don't want to make this "who has things worst" but it's nonetheless true). At best, she's throwing them under the bus to make a point she thinks will be popular with her supporters. At worst, she's actively affirming her own party's racist policies.

"It doesn't matter if we criminalise their way of life, because it's not "real" racism".

She is someone seen to be on the left, seen to be anti-racist, and she's effectively saying this prejudice is acceptable.

#uk politics #diane abbott #labour #racism #GRT #is the backlash more severe because she's black and a woman and on the left #well maybe #But there's also an awful lot of gaslighting going on towards Romani Irish Travellers and Jewish people on twitter #who don't have her institutional power #a timely reminder #politicians are not your friends

[dougielombax]

Fucking hell.

Not again.

It fucking better! Azerbaijan ought to be sanctioned into hell and back again for this shit starting yesterday!

Seriously!

Heck I think we should boycott the shit out of Azerbaijan on top of that!

#dougie rambles #political crap #news #europe #caucasus #armenia #artsakh #free artsakh #azerbaijan #fuck azerbaijan #war crimes #terrorism #genocide #Lemkin institute #raphael lemkin #reblog this #reblog the shit out of this #us state department #sanctions #or lack thereof #boycott Azerbaijan

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

And I'd love to be proven wrong, but I really think all of the ICJ hype is going to end in big disappointment for most folks

#i was literally on a zoom call last night and there was someone in it who is working in the hague rn #he was giving us a tour of the court building and all of their fancy statues and shit. people were mesmerized. #no institution in a building with a bust of tsar nicholas II in it is going to be a vehicle of liberation. sorry. #folks need to brace themselves for continuing to organize and fight after this bit of political theater is over #not that what SA is doing is not historic and monumental #but really don't hold your breath for a bunch of ruling class judges to rule in favor of the oppressed

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

#us politics #republicans #conservatives #gop #congressional salaries #minimum wage #wages #raise the minimum wage #wage gap #intergenerational wealth #tax rate #hourly wages #capital gains #capital gains tax #income #productivity vs. pay #productivity #economic policy institute #Piketty/Saez data #NBER #Federal Reserve Distributional Accounts #graphs #statistics

[thatrandombystander]

Are you fucking kidding me. With all this pinkwashing propaganda the Israeli state puts out about how they will protect and cherish LGBT+ rights unlike those evil homophobic Palestinians which is why you should let us genocide them

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE ISN'T EVEN LEGAL IN ISRAEL??????

#COMPLETELY MORALLY BANKRUPT #YOUR PINKWASHING PROPAGANDA HAS NOTHING TO STAND ON #this is just fucking insulting. #y'know. on top of the genocide and crimes against humanity being enacted onto the Palestinian peoples at a horrific and unconscionable rate #zionists in my activity feed will be blocked on sight. #and so will antisemites. there is a difference between a political state and the people it claims to represent #i condemn the israeli state and the individuals which support it. #but this does not extend to all israelis (and/or all jewish peoples whom israel claims to represent) #as there are many good people all across the world who are represented by institutions #that are at odds with their individual views and ideologies #no shitfuckery in my notes please. #current events #palestine #ramblings of a bystander