KOL081 | Adam vs the Man: Drug Patents 2011

Remember the Atlanta school teachers and administrators busted in a massive cheating ring? You won't believe who's coming to their defense now. It's the parents. Luke and Jake join me tonight to weigh in on a Lithuanian mayor weighing in on this. And Rum Selden sued for an unlawful arrest in Iraq and feds importing coke from Mexico. And and not because it's got real sugar instead of corn syrup. We're talking the nose candy. Several tons of it. We'll cover the conservative civil war or as we call it the war of neo-con aggression, a defeat for Monsanto, Stefan Kinsella on why drug patents expire is very good news, and Mike Adams joins us for the latest fallout from the LAPD and LA County Department of Agriculture raid on organic producers, our friends at Rawsum. Because when the government isn't there to protect you from yourself, there's always Adam versus the man. The passion of our hearts will be read WITH OUR FISTS. WE REPORTED ON THE ATLANTA PUBLIC SCHOOL CHEATING scandal a few weeks ago. For those of you unfamiliar with the situation, an investigation named 178 educators, including 38 principals, in a mass cheating ring smudging scores to make their local school system look better to get more federal funds as per No Child Left Behind. Well, here's the interesting twist. Some parents are now coming out to defend the schools named in the investigation. We've been extremely pleased with the instruction my children have received. They are an example of what is right with Atlanta public schools. Now, I I don't know the details of this particular parent's experience and I certainly don't endorse the central planning element of government administered testing, but it's hard to believe that the children in question as a whole are getting a quality education if so many teachers are having to lie about their performance. But if if what's going on in Atlanta's public schools is what's right with our public schools, I don't want to know what's considered wrong. I believe that good educators should first and foremost to students be mentors and friends rather than metric obsessed tyrants who rule by fear as is so often the case or predators. But in Missouri, it is now illegal for students and teachers to be Facebook friends. Wait, uh Come on. They didn't even have Facebook back then. Can we Can we get a shot of a nice friendly mentorly teacher? Hey, all right. All right, that works. In yet another case of government overreach. Seriously? All right, that That's more like it. The measure was signed into law with the intention of preventing inappropriate relationships between teachers and students. If a teacher and an underage student are going to form an inappropriate relationship, they'll find ways to do it without the help of Facebook. But since it's official policy for schools to spy on students with Facebook, you think they'd want to encourage positive teacher-student relationships in a way that would also make it easier to catch predators. Well, the law at least concedes though that teacher fan pages are still okay for teacher-student communication. The most outrageous bit of this friends friending will also be forbidden between former students and teachers. I just want to stop right here and say one thing to put this into a real simple context. Government is now telling people who you can and cannot friend on Facebook. And uh Where Where Where Where was she when when I was 15? I might have paid a little more attention in school. Last week we reported on the horrific case of Kelly Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless schizophrenic man who 1 month ago was beaten to death by the Fullerton police. Multiple witnesses, some who even have video, insisted Mr. Thomas was beaten into the ground, kicked, and electrocuted repeatedly by six police officers well after losing consciousness. Though federal and internal investigations are underway, the police cruiser footage has not yet been released. But new evidence against the police officers has hit the net. A security video taken in a nearby bus has multiple witnesses just vacating the scene recounting the horrific story to the driver. Their previously reported accounts mirror the story they tell the bus driver in the video. Quote, "I'm telling you, homeless guy was just chilling and then the cops came. Two cop cars came, two cops. They tried getting him, but he just ran off from them, ran away from them, and then they caught him, pound his face, pound his face against the curb was red, and they beat him up." In another development, an anonymous caller into a Fullerton radio show made several assertions. First, that there exists a surveillance video showing a one-eyed officer Jay Cicinelli doing most of the beating. The caller accuses Cicinelli of repeatedly beating Thomas with the butt of his Taser gun as well as dropping his knee repeatedly on his nose and throat. The victim's father, a retired sheriff's deputy himself, is demanding surveillance videos of the incident be made public while members of the Fullerton City Council are now calling calling for the police chief, Michael Sellers, to step down. The father has already turned down a $900,000 settlement offer. We'll keep you updated on the story as it unfolds and hope for justice for Kelly Thomas. As Obama tramples on the Constitution, many are wondering just who will stand up to him. Many conservatives, libertarians, and independents turn to the Republican Party. Some with enthused optimism, others with hesitant cynicism. The coalition often formed on the under the GOP banner is one of loose affiliations and uneasy alliances. But more and more, those alliances seem to seem all too tense to remain alliances at all. The Conservative Political Action Conference here in Washington, D.C. is considered the annual gathering of right-wing activists. Arranged by the non-partisan American Conservative Union, its straw poll is widely held by many to be a strong finger on the pulse of conservative politics and the best predictor of the GOP presidential nominee. That is until Ron Paul won the poll this year as a little follow-up to what detractors dismissed as a fluke victory last year. A few months ago, we introduced you to this guy. Christopher Malagisi, the newly appointed director of CPAC 2012, a self-proclaimed conservative despite that showy picture with Mr. Big Government. Shortly after the first Republican presidential debate, Malagisi blasted Congressman Paul and his supporters in the Washington Examiner, asserting that our policy positions make us unfit to claim membership to the GOP or any conservative legacy at all, despite the fact that, as we've pointed out, Ron Paul's positions make him conservative by any definition of the word that doesn't include kissing ass as some form of big government that guys like Malagisi shill for. Well, it seems Christopher will fit right into the ACU who continue to display a total lack of common sense when it comes to building an effective conservative coalition. Not only does Malagisi, as a representative of the ACU, slap a significant portion of the so-called conservative coalition in the face by attacking libertarians, but his employer has now barred gay conservative group GOProud from CPAC 2012. Perhaps more surprising, the rabidly anti-communist John Birch Society has also been barred from appearing at the conference in any official capacity. Of course, GOProud's presence at previous CPAC conferences also raised concerns with large right-wing organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, Media Research Center, and the Family Research Council, but this doesn't bode well for avoiding a movement rift. Maybe they're kicking out GOProud to bring old blood back into the CPAC tent. You know, like the religious right, the the policy wonks over at Heritage. Uh But but consider this. As CPAC representatives alienate more and more self-proclaimed conservatives, are they exacerbating a growing rift among the right? The winds are blowing towards the Tea Party, towards libertarianism, towards the live and let live voluntarist philosophy, and towards tolerance for homosexuals. And yet the ACU and its new CPAC director are moving away. The GOP establishment has infuriated the Tea Party with the recent debt compromise, and even more so with the formation of the so-called super Congress. Even in the midst of political chaos, established conservative organizations are failing to unite coalitions under banners of even pragmatism. One has to wonder what the future holds for the conservative movement as a whole and for the GOP if these riffs continue to grow. If Obama must be challenged by a principled leader, someone capable not just of smooth rhetoric, but execution of consistent principles, or conservatives, independents, and libertarians, we all lose. One thing is obvious as libertarians gain a louder voice in the fight against Obama, a banner of intolerance, religious fanaticism, or imperialism will never again be capable of defeating the progressive machine. It's time for the rest of the conservative movement to leave the culture war to culture, rather than inject it into policy, and come together to save our country from our very big government. All right. Here at Adam vs. The Man, as you probably have figured out by now, we steal all of our good ideas from the Alona Show. And now that Luke and Jake are both back in town, we can do our happy hour style segment and rip off Alona's Tool Time bit at the same time. Joining me now to weigh in on the latest news stories that lend themselves to a discussion style form of presentation are the two biggest tool bags that I know. First is Luke, tool of the New World Order Radoski, just back from a month and a half long tour of Europe, and our own military analyst power tool extraordinaire Jake negative neocon Nancy DeLiberto. Gentlemen, Adam, I these tools at least change our t-shirt. Uh, I did this is the first time I've ever had And we don't smell as bad cuz we change our clothes. All right, we I yeah, really the the variety is is That's the best you got coming out of the gate. All right, I want to play you guys a clip. This has been making the rounds on the internet. We have the mayor of a Lithuanian town Vilnius mayor Arturas Zuokas with a slightly new approach to parking enforcement. Let's roll that. This is what will happen if you park your car illegally. Over the top? If that was my mayor, I'm taking a big giant dump on his lawn. What a jerk. >> I'm surprised. I thought you like big government, Jake. This is Oh my god, you No, no, no, you have to remember he hates following the rules when it comes to parking for himself, especially here in DC. So, you know he's going to take the side against the mayor here, right? >> No, but this mayor is a scumbag. He's the ultimate douchebag. I really want to take a big steaming pile of dog poop and shove it in his face. What guy can get away with that? Jake's right. This is pretty much a very slick PR campaign. I mean, the mayor just a couple months ago was facing charges for election fraud and corruption. So, now this is like a big slick thing. This is what politics has become. >> staged. Exactly. I mean, the street is perfectly cleared, you know, the cameras are out. They they even have him after crushing the car walk up to the owner coming out of a store and he shakes and it's like really >> And for us Americans, like the most important thing is this isn't new. Like this like a leaders with military vehicles not new. We saw Dukakis riding with the tank. The the machismo of it. >> we saw >> tough but here you have the you have the tough on crime. >> Right. And and John Kerry with his like I'm reporting for duty and Bush landing on a plane like >> on before we go on there's something more offensive about this in particular is that it's simple it has nothing to do with resolving the issue except destroying property in the interest of scaring people something that's not really going to happen anyways and when so many people are suffering financially around the world they're they're just going to start destroying people's cars. I mean like as much as it pisses me off tickets towing boots not nearly as bad as property destruction none of those raise to come to that level. Anyways, we want to touch on another story we have former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld finally being held to account. I love this accountability for government. He is an appeals court has judged that he can be sued for an illegal detention of an American who is working in Iraq was detained for 9 months as a contractor translator. >> are an idealistic liberal. Oh no there's just two of us. Mystic out of this one maybe okay. So you think this case is going to go away? >> It's not going to go anywhere basically because the courts hear cases in three tiers. The bottom tier is a case like this against high a case against a high privileged leader. The second tier is basically financial cases where the state can make money and the top tier would be cases of your first 10 amendments guns speech that sort of thing. But this is not going anywhere it's dead upon arrival it's it's it's a great symbolic gesture. >> something else to interview Rumsfeld about right? >> Exactly I mean that's a whole another subject that I'm going to go after him about and there's so many but the thing is about this case you know you're right I can't believe I agree with you it's not going to go anywhere. It's a symbolic gesture but they should all >> So should it should Of course all the whole all the Bush administration What's what's a fair punishment for someone like Rumsfeld so far removed from the men that executed this policy when it's when it when it comes to a form of personal damage illegal detention and torture? >> the entire Bush administration from Douglas Feith to Dick Cheney to Rumsfeld to Bush himself ought to be put on trial. In my opinion, they would be found guilty and they ought to be put to death for the treason that they committed against this country. They're some of the most evil people that have ever stepped in the Oval Office. >> If we can only hope that a trial would contain all of that. One One last story real quick here. We have the Sinaloa Cartel in defense in US federal court alleging that federal agents let them import coke into the United States in exchange for intel on other cartels. Luke, is this going somewhere? >> this for years. I mean, I've been talking about this for years and called a conspiracy theorist by Jake. I mean, this is nothing new. Iran-Contra was happening now in Afghanistan with the opium fields. 1960s it came out the CIA was drug running. And this is not alleged. The article didn't go as far as it should because this guy Vincent Zambada, the main guy, actually says he ran cocaine for the Well, we'll see. We'll see. Hold on. Hold on. We'll see. We'll see. This is still tentative, but we'll be coming back to the story, gentlemen. I'm sorry, that's all the uh tool bag of commentary we have time for, but thanks for being with us tonight. When we come back, we'll have the latest on the recent Rawson Foods raid from Mike Adams, which brings up the obvious question, what would Ron Paul have to say? This is pasteurization without representation. We also have a victory for organic farmers against Monsanto and Stefan Kinsella on why expiring drug patents might be the best thing for drug consumers. That's you, America. Stay tuned. You're watching Adam versus the man. RT is the state-run English-speaking Russian channel. It's kind of like Al Jazeera. Russia Today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to the US. I got news for you, gang. The world is round, not flat. US casualties in Iraq. That's my kid. Don't tell me how much time I spend helping others. And the prime minister You say no foreign aid whatsoever. Watch what happens. And coming up next Welcome back to Adam vs. The Man. Get it? Raw, awesome. Our friends there anyways. It's a private buying club for organic foods out of Venice, California, and they were raided again yesterday for the second time in a little over a year by the Los Angeles Police Department and LA County Department of Agriculture. Their crime? Selling raw milk products. Joining us now is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, who broke the story on his website naturalnews.com. Mike, what's the latest on this assault on really the the health freedom of all of us? Uh good to be joining you, Adam. Thanks for having me on. We have breaking news for you just a few minutes out of the the courtroom. James Stewart has had his bail reduced from 123,000 down to $30,000 mostly due to public pressure because there were protest this morning all at at the county courthouse, also Victoria Block was released with no bail requirement. She was also charged with conspiracy as well as James and another woman, Victoria. Uh or Sharon, excuse me. Those three were charged with conspiracy to commit a felony crime. Now, remember the crime, the so-called crime here is selling unpasteurized milk. So, it is now apparently illegal in California to sell raw milk and raw cheese through a buyer's club. And the enforcement agents went in and destroyed the entire inventory. They poured milk down the drain. They confiscated watermelons and mangoes and raw honey and took it away on a truck leaving the members there with no food, in some cases no food for their children who were being fed things like raw goat's milk. So, Mike, what is it that makes raw Rawesome unique? Why is the heat coming on them right now? Well, Rawesome is a private buying club, not a public grocery store. So, members have private contracts to be able to own portions of cows and goats and then collect the raw milk that they produce. This bypasses the normal regulatory control that the FDA loves to exercise over stores and even local agencies love to exercise. So, this is really a battle about who has regulatory control and whether or not free Americans have the right to engage to enter in private contracts for the food they wish to consume. So, how can people get involved to help out with the victims here? You said public pressure is having some effect and I know you're following this and and and keeping up with it at naturalnews.com. What can our viewers do to help out? Is there Is there a place to get more information or come to the defense of the victims here? Well, this story has been breaking big in the alternative media, so I would encourage people to continue to tune in to RT. I'm in the InfoWars studio right now and Alex Jones continues to cover this topic, naturalnews as well. But I would encourage people to be part of the public protest, to just stay informed through alternative media, because the old media is not covering this issue as they should. You're only going to get the full story in the alternative press. Okay, now, so if if Rawesome was supposed to be a legal setup because they were a buying club and not actually selling unpasteurized milk really openly to the public, how how are how is the government getting confused on this one? What's their angle? What's their excuse, you know, that that that that justified this raid now? Well, the government really is is distorting the situation. I would say they're lying about it. They are claiming that this is a store that was selling raw milk to the public, but that's not true. There's other evidence that they're violating their own rules. For example, the search warrant claimed or gave them permission to take various samples of the foods, but instead they pillaged the entire store, Adam. They took everything. They didn't just take samples. So, we're we're we're seeing this tyranny break out of of these government agents that are supposed to be protecting public health, but it looks like they're just attacking a small business owner and destroying a source of food for children and adults who are into raw foods. Okay, Mike, just a second left here. Is this more a case of a handful of local micro tyrants out of control, or is there something broader behind this? Much broader. There's indication now that the FDA is going to have a special prosecutor prosecuting this case under environmental law. This is both a federal and a a California state multi-agency prosecution. There were at least five different agencies present at the raid, both state and federal. Outstanding. Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining us tonight, and thanks for keeping up with the story. That was Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, and we'll be coming back to this with naturalnews.com helping out along the way. All too many times we've heard the tales of Monsanto harassing, intimidating, and extorting small family farms all around the American heartland where traces of genetically modified chemical covered Franken crops have genetically contaminated organic or just plain non-GMO produce. However, Monsanto's GMO crop peddlers are starting to get a taste of their own medicine. The Minnesota Court of Appeals has ruled that organic farms can seek damages against nearby chemical covered farms if the contaminants are found on the property of the organic farms. In the case of Olaf and Deborah Johnson's 1,500 acre organic farm in Stearns County, Minnesota, their organic crops were damaged by contamination from chemical pesticides. A local pesticide cooperative, the Paynesville Farmers Union, was cited at least four times for damaging the Johnson's harvest by irresponsibly spraying pesticides that landed on the Johnson's property four times before they finally got fed up and took them to court. The Appeals Court just ruled that particulate matter, including pesticides, herbicides, and GM, that's genetically modified particulates, that contaminate nearby fields is considered illegal trespass. Finally, a chance at some justice on the basis of property rights. If only they applied that to the gene contamination issue and we had a tort system that was worth a damn, we might get some real justice from Monsanto. Let's just hope the precedent of this case can be expanded and that somewhere there's a Monsanto lawyer crying into a bowl of genetically modified popcorn and drowning his sorrows with corn syrup laden soda. Is there any chance that big pharma can find a way to bend the laws back in their favor and take these generics off the market? Can they get these patents renewed? Are we likely to see drug costs going up significantly in the short term for these brands before their patents expire? Well, in the next 14 months, there are going to be a whole wave of drug patents expiring. Joining me now is copyright expert from the Mises Institute Stephan Stephan Kinsella. Stephan, thank you so much for being with us tonight. Glad to be here, Adam. So, what what is the advantage for consumers if we see intellectual property going away? Isn't intellectual property supposed to protect developers and ensure that consumers are getting better service? Well, that's the that's the line that's given out by the companies that actually seek this protection from monopoly this this monopoly protection from competition that patents give them. But as you can see from recent reports, when these patents expire, the the consumers are going to be a lot better off. The prices are going to plummet. Okay, so if prices are are are going to plummet, how does this How is intellectual property right now keeping prices up? So, basically you have a drug company pharmaceutical company, they file for a patent for some some chemical they come up with. And if they get the patent, then they can basically outlaw anyone from competing with them for up to 20 years of the patent term. So, they're able to charge monopoly prices. Okay, so for our our our viewers who aren't familiar with how intellectual property is applied specifically to pharmaceuticals, give Take a step back. How is it that you have a patent that exists for an arbitrary period of time and then and then it's free game? How did that come about? So, what happened was historically, you know, the government used to grant monopolies. The monarch would grant monopoly privileges called letters patent to favored businesses and industries and cronies to buy their loyalty. And they would give them the sole right to make something in an area, you know, the the horseshoe guy, the bread guy, whatever. Of course, this is mercantilism and anti-competitive. And when the in in the United States, when we when we ratified the Constitution, they decided to put a patent and copyright clause in there to let uh the the government give temporary monopolies to inventors and artists uh for a period of time to try to incentivize them to come up with inventions and artistic works. Okay, so if we don't have the FDA looking out for us, how is how does the actual how does the market work in the absence of that intellectual property or rather that safety mechanism that is created by the intellectual property setup that we have for pharmaceuticals? How does the market then differentiate between effective and ineffective what we would call generic versions of a drug? How will that competition work after these patents expire in the next 14 months? Well, of course it would work like like like any other product works in the market that's not subject to significant government regulation and oversight. You would have private rating agencies, consumers would have an interest to look out for you know, stamps and seals of approval from different rating boards, things like this. Companies would have an interest in proving the safety of their products. Of course they would. But what they wouldn't be able to do is go to the government and ask the government to give them protection from competition for 15 or 20 years. Uh most entrepreneurs and businesses have to take the risk that they're going to have competition if they're successful. If you come up with a new idea, a new plan, you hope to make money and you introduce your product or your service into the market and if you're successful, you're going to draw competitors. Uh and so you have to keep innovating and improving your service to stay ahead of the competition. Um people that benefit from patents can just go to the government and ask the government to give them a right to sue their competitors to stop them from competing. So, lower prices, better competition, all things that we have to look forward to when these patents expire, we get slightly more freedom in the market. As as an intellectual property rights or anti-intellectual property rights activist, as someone who believes in freedom of information. Are you hoping that the American people will see this? I mean, we have the top two drugs in America and seven of the top 20 all going off patent. Is is Are you Are you hoping that the American people are going to look at this and and take away some kind of lesson and go, "Wow, intellectual property bad for competition, bad for consumers." I'm hoping so. There's a lot of a lot of movement in the anti-copyright, anti-patent direction with the all the stories we hear of abuses and the escalation of laws. I think it's becoming clearer and clearer to people that these laws are only harmful and they're basically a scam. The problem is it's approached in an unprincipled way. People say, "Well, it needs to be it needs to be fixed. We need to temper the abuses of the system." You know, unlike the drug war where you can finally show people that it's just a completely unjust government program, patent and copyright, which are monopoly privileges granted by the government to protect people from competition, are called property. And so, people are used to being in favor of property and so, they have a reluctance to come out against what they believe is a property right in principle. But I believe that the mounting evidence, the mounting examples that we see could hopefully persuade more and more people. There is a growing academic and intellectual consensus among the left, among libertarians, among some conservatives about the danger of letting government, which is a monopoly itself, issue these monopoly privileges. >> a monopoly that itself has convinced us to have very little respect for property rights. So, F. A. Hayek Cancela of the Ludwig von Mises Institute at mises.org, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you, Adam. Remember how excited you were? It was November 2008 and hopes were high. Change was in the air. But since then, things may have turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. Maybe it's that he hasn't closed Guantanamo Bay. Maybe it's that he's escalated a bunch of wars. Maybe it's because he defended don't ask, don't tell. Maybe it's because he's granted health care reform exemptions to over 30 corporations. Maybe it's the $250 million for Blackwater. Maybe it's the crackdown on whistleblowers. Maybe it's the bailouts to Wall Street and the banksters. Or maybe it's the 22 and 1/2% real unemployment. Perhaps after all that you could use some Obama Disappoint-Mints to cheer you up. But apparently that was not the case for one very disappointed state representative from Tennessee. For Democrat Joe Armstrong, a little cheer wasn't what he was looking for. NO, HE WANTED DENIAL. THE MINTS WERE AT THE University of Tennessee bookstore and after buying a tin for $2.99, he calmly persuaded the store manager to pull the product. Actually, Armstrong allegedly got a phone call from a student who was offended, but no one really believes that. When they had mints making fun of Bush, no one complained. But who knows? With this kind of disappointment continuing as a result of Democrats' vicious denial of reality, we might be seeing the return of Impeach-Mints. This time for Obama. This is Adam Kokesh from Washington D.C. Have a good night. We'll talk to you tomorrow.