1. HEALTH

The Senate health care debate stalls on the question of
whether to permit
the re-importation of drugs from countries with price controls.

CEI Expert Available
to Comment: Senior Fellow Gregory
Conko on how low-cost re-importation can be hazardous to your health:

“Re-importation advocates suggest
that permitting pharmacies and pharmaceutical wholesalers to purchase drugs
from countries such as Canada and United Kingdom, which impose vigorous price
controls, would permit U.S. citizens to access medicines at sharp discounts
over their domestic prices. However, a spate of recent enforcement actions in
those countries shows that the pharmaceutical distribution supply chain in many
low-cost countries, including those in western Europe, is tainted by a large
number of unsafe counterfeit medicines.”

2. BUSINESS

President Obama announces an expansion of the bank bailout
program known as TARP.

CEI Expert Available
to Comment: Director of the Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs John Berlau on the money should go
back to taxpayers instead:

“President
Obama’s announcement that he will extend TARP — the Troubled Assets Relief
Program — and keep spending its proceeds could not have come at a worse time.
Credit rating agencies are looking at dropping the ‘Triple A’ rating from the U.S. because of
the trillions in spending on bailouts, stimulus and other big-government
programs. The rationale put forward seems to be that because we spent this for
undeserving big banks, it’s only fair to spend the rest of taxpayer dollars on
small businesses, But two wrongs don’t make a right, and this money belongs to
taxpayers, not to the favored recipients of politicians.”

3. ENVIRONMENT

Former Alaska
governor Sarah Palin writes a controversial op-ed for the Washington Post on
global warming and the recent “ClimateGate”
scandal.

CEI Expert Available
to Comment: Adjunct Fellow Fran Smith on the predictable quality of the responses:

“[Palin’s op-ed] yesterday on
ClimateGate and the Copenhagen
conference has spawned a blizzard of comments from Post readers. Almost
4,000 comments as of this morning. Many of them – no friends of free speech –
attack the newspaper for publishing Palin’s article at all. Huffington Post
sycophants are similarly energized in their hatred for Palin and for free
speech…Interesting that instead of commenting on the substance of the article,
detractors are more interested in ad hominems. May sound familiar to skeptics
of catastrophic global warming or the ‘deniers’ as they’re often referred to.”

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