- Viatris expects adjusted EBITDA and EPS to be slightly higher in the second half vs. the first half 2024.
- The company expects the 2024 adjusted gross margin to be moderate in the second half due to segment and product mix.
Friday, May 10, 2024
Weak Sales From Lipitor, Norvasc Hurt Viatris' Q1 Earnings, Lowers Annual Forecast
San Francisco is giving taxpayer-funded shots of vodka to homeless alcoholics
$5m program organizers claim 'improves participants' health'
The City of San Francisco is handing out bottles of beer, glasses of wine and shots of vodka to homeless alcoholics - and spending $5m a year on the program.
The alcoholic drinks are served by nurses as part of the city's 'managed alcohol program', which has been running for four years, as a way of taking care of vulnerable homeless people.
The program is designed to curb the amount of alcohol homeless people drink. It still allows them some, but in a more managed way, in the hope of curbing their addiction in a controlled manner.
Nurses assess patients and typically serve them the equivalent of 1-2 drinks between three and four times a day — handing out either 1.7 ounces of vodka or liquor (about a shot), 5 ounces of wine (1 glass) or 12 ounces of beer - about three-quarters of a pint.
Experts involved in the program say that it has actually helped to keep homeless alcoholics out of hospitals, jails, and even from dying.
Before the program was set up, those who drank alcohol to excess were among the city's highest users of the emergency services.
The program has doubled in size since it began in 2020. While at first there were 10 beds available for those suffering from alcoholism, there are now 20 beds available on the premises of a disused hotel in the Tenderloin District.
But it comes at a cost, with the city pouring money into the program to the tune of $5 million a year as nurses serve shots of vodka and beer several times a day, based on 'patients' specific healthcare plans.
The focus is not so much on insuring those taking part become completely sober, but improving their overall health drop by drop.
While the program may be raising spirits among the homeless community, some residents appear to have learned of the city's efforts only recently and believe the taxpayer funded program to be money down the drain.
Adam Nathan, CEO of an AI company and chair of the Salvation Army San Francisco's advisory board noted that drugs are not being handed out to drug addicts and so questions why would alcohol be given to alcoholics.
'The whole thing is very odd to me and just doesn't feel right. Providing free drugs to drug addicts doesn't solve their problems. It just stretches them out. Where's the recovery in all of this?', Nathan posted to X.
The program's thinking is based around 'harm reduction' which looks to cut the negative health effects from alcohol and drug use rather than the complete cessation of such vices.
Homelessness and deaths from overdoses have plagued the city in years gone by, but critics argue such programs only allow addictions to continue.
The Salvation Army, which pushes for the complete abstinence of alcohol, has criticized the city for spending public funds on the initiative.
Even San Francisco's own mayor, London Breed appears to be at odds with her own public health department, believing the technique of harm reduction was not actually reducing the harm, but making things far worse.
'Are we just going to manage people's addictions with our taxpayer dollars in perpetuity forever? It seems like that's basically what we're saying,' said Tom Wolf, who is in recovery for heroin addiction, to the San Francisco Chronicle. 'I think we should be spending that money on detox and recovery.'
But a professor at the UCSF School of Nursing, Shannon Smith-Bernardin, who helped set up the program in San Francisco explained how the aim is to stabilize the amount of alcohol being used by the homeless people 'so they're not binge drinking or stopping drinking and having seizures and then … start figuring out what's next.'
Aside from pouring the pints, and serving the shots, the program also allows those taking part to receive medication and therapy in a further drive to reduce the alcohol cravings.
Nathan has brought the program on his social media feed earlier this week, posting details of what he discovered after walking into the former hotel where the scheme operated. He was appalled by what he had seen.
'I'm no doctor or "expert" on issues of drug policy. But I am a taxpayer. When did this Managed Alcohol Program get approved? Where were the public hearings? Why is it hidden away in an old hotel? Who approved a $2 million budget for it?' Nathan asked on X.
Legal immigrants are being hurt the most by Biden’s policies
Who is being hurt the most by the administration’s rush to give work permits to tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens it’s ushering illegally into the United States each month? Immigrants who follow the rules.
Most in the media focus solely on those crossing the border illegally, which is why last January, the White House began hiding the scope of its border disaster by funneling migrants through the legal ports of entry instead.
That effort was successful until my colleague Todd Bensman blew the lid off a Biden scheme that allows hundreds of thousands of nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly directly to interior US airports, under a policy with the anodyne name “CHNV parole.”
CHNV parole — which Congress has never authorized — allows up to 360,000 nationals of those four countries to enter the United States annually, despite the fact that the Department of Homeland Security recently had to admit that all of them “are, by definition, inadmissible.”
That inconvenient fact aside, each one of them is allowed to seek a work permit here.
As bad as that is, it pales in comparison to a different — and even bigger — Biden scheme you’ve probably never heard of.
It enables up to 1,400 would-be illegal migrants per day (a half-million-plus per year) to schedule appointments at the southwest border ports of entry using the “CBP One mobile app.”
Nearly 96% of them are also paroled into the United States, and all of them, again, can seek work permits here. You can also add them to the tens of thousands of other aliens apprehended by Border Patrol and released into the country monthly despite also being inadmissible.
Not surprisingly, allowing nearly 900,000 “parolees” annually to seek work permits has imposed significant burdens on US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency charged with adjudicating those requests.
Biden’s USCIS, however, has responded by expediting those parolee work permits.
According to DHS’s own stats, it took the agency on average of more than six months to adjudicate a work permit application (Form I-765) for a parolee under Trump in FY 2019.
By the first quarter of FY 2024, after parolee work requests skyrocketed under these Biden schemes, USCIS had that decision time down to 27 days.
Taxpayers may laud the agency’s newfound efficiency, but here’s the problem: While USCIS has whittled down the time it takes to issue work permits to aliens with no right to be here, the agency’s delay in adjudicating applications for legal immigrants has subsequently soared.
You’re a US citizen and want to bring your alien fiancée to the United States? USCIS took 5.2 months to adjudicate those “Form I-129F” applications in FY 2019, while today it takes 9.6 months — an 84% increase.
What about your alien spouse? Such I-130 “Petitions for Alien Relative” were adjudicated in 8.6 months under President Donald Trump, but it now takes USCIS more than 11 months to process them — 29% longer and an increase that seems like an eternity for couples looking to build a new life together.
It’s no wonder aliens abroad skip immigrating “the right way” and instead pay smugglers to help them “jump the line.”
Entering “the right way” is for suckers.
Andrew Arthur is the fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.
https://nypost.com/2024/05/10/opinion/legal-immigrants-are-being-hurt-the-most-by-bidens-policies/
Bidenomics At Work: Ford Slashing Battery Orders As Losses Per EV Approach $100,000
Ford is cutting battery orders in yet another sign that the EV market, despite a constant tailwind from the U.S. taxpayer, is starting to slow.
The company is cutting the orders to curb electric-vehicle losses as it scales back its EV strategy in a slowing plug-in market, according to insiders who spoke to Bloomberg.
Ford CEO Jim Farley has said the company's EV unit “is the main drag on the whole company right now" and CAT said its “cooperation with Ford is moving forward as normal”.
The company responded by saying it wouldn't comment on relationships with suppliers.
Bloomberg notes that with plummeting EV prices and weakening demand, Ford's losses per electric vehicle exceeded $100,000 in the first quarter, doubling last year's deficit.
Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that Ford's projected EV unit losses this year will nearly offset profits from its Ford Blue division, which produces traditional internal combustion engine vehicles like the Bronco SUV and gas-electric hybrids such as the Maverick truck.
BI analysts said of the results: “That raises questions about the prudence of investing heavily in EVs.”
Ford's order reductions highlight industry challenges as U.S. automakers face weaker-than-expected EV demand and battery makers in South Korea, China, and beyond struggle with unsold inventory.
Making a great electric car at a great price is extremely difficult
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 10, 2024
This has affected prices for key metals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel, leading to multiyear lows and stalling new projects. Ford has reduced EV production costs but had to cut prices to stay competitive with Tesla.
Ford CFO John Lawler said in April: “We’ve seen prices coming down quite dramatically and that’s why we haven’t been able to keep up from a cost reduction standpoint.”
He continued: “But we’re targeting to take out as much cost this year as we can on Model e and all in the spirit of driving toward that contribution margin positive.”
He concluded: “Model e has to stand on its own. It needs to be profitable and it has to provide a return on the capital we’re investing.”
Thus, its no surprise to us (or to our readers, we're sure) why, exactly Ford is cutting back on its EV investments.
Recall we noted from the Epoch Times just days ago that on April 24, Ford reported it lost $132,000 for each of its 10,000 electric vehicles sold in the first quarter of 2024, according to CNN. The sales were down 20 percent from the first quarter of 2023 and would “drag down earnings for the company overall.”
The losses include “hundreds of millions being spent on research and development of the next generation of EVs for Ford. Those investments are years away from paying off.” Ford is the only major carmaker breaking out EV numbers by themselves. But other marques likely suffer similar losses.
Hamas Declares That It Will Make No Further Concessions
Reuters reports that “Hamas says it will not compromise further with Israel to win Gaza ceasefire.”
It’s just another headline about the heirs of Yassir Arafat; we know better than to take the statement seriously. Hamas will keep talking as long as they can, for obvious reasons.
The people engaged in negotiations, at least, if not their foot-soldiers, are safe while they’re at the negotiating table.
But there’s a different question that ought to be inspired by that quote: Why is any kind of compromise even an issue?
In a normal war, between two legitimate governments, one hopes for negotiations, discussions, compromises, whatever it takes to bring an end to hostilities.
This is not a normal war.
Israel has a legitimate government, and Hamas is a crime gang full of the most brutal of homicidal maniacs. This isn’t so much a war as it is a police action; Israel finally has the political will and the public support to wipe out a powerful criminal gang that has spent 35 years attacking and terrorizing Israeli citizens.
What does Hamas say, every time they return to the table? That they want Israel to stop shooting at them and give them lots of money and resources, which everyone knows Hamas will then use to make more rockets to shoot into Israel.
It’s what Hamas does. It’s what Hamas always does. It’s Hamas’s raison d'être
Think for a moment about the most horrific crimes you can think of in American history.
Richard Speck was a violent drunkard and robber, who went on a crime spree, stabbing, raping and murdering at least eight innocent, defenseless women in 1966.
John Gacy was a child molester, rapist and Chicago Democrat party political activist who went on a crime spree, raping and murdering over thirty young men over a period of several years in the early 1970s.
Charles Manson was an arsonist, robber, pimp and drug abuser who organized a drug-driven death cult and engineered a notorious murder spree of at least seven people in August 1969.
How would the American press react if the police were working on finding and catching these criminals, and the criminals released statements to the press saying that they’ve already compromised as much as they’re going to, and the police are just going to have stop being so demanding? How would we, the American public, react if they haughtily insisted on an end to the pursuit once their hideouts were identified? Would we be open to the idea of leaving them alone, and setting them free, once we finally had these killers surrounded?
Of course not. The very concept is outrageous. Once you have identified vicious mass murderers, and pursued them to their lairs, you finish the job. There’s no question here. But the way the mainstream press reports the stories, we forget what’s really going on.
Please note: this is not about ethnicity at all. It’s not a blanket judgment of the people of the Gaza Strip, many of whom are just as terrorized by Hamas as the Jews, Christians, and Arabs of Haifa, Ashdod and Tel Aviv are. The innocent Arab population of the Gaza Strip – those who do not support Hamas – are victims of Hamas as well, and they deserve freedom from their local tyrants, too.
This is a judgment of Hamas, a huge, malevolent crime gang that has been documented – in fact, they have proudly documented themselves – committing the most ghastly of crimes, at least equal to the ones committed by the American mass murderers named above.
Both the Western press and the American Democrat party insist on treating Hamas as if they are a legitimate government in a normal war. They are anything but.
The Gaza Strip is not an independent nation, and Hamas is neither a legitimate government nor a legitimate army.
On October 7, Hamas partisans charged through the wall separating Gaza from an area of kibbutzes, and they started rampaging, attacking the innocent residents of the farmhouses in these undefended, communal farms, and the equally innocent revelers at a music festival.
Within hours, 1,140 innocents had been murdered, many of them raped and tortured first, not by one or two fringe outliers of the invaders, but by many of them – too many for these crimes to be considered an exception to the rule.
These Hamas terrorists burned people and places. They destroyed property. They raped children, adults, and seniors, both men and women, before torturing and killing them.
The press denied these extremes at first; saying there was no evidence.
But there is tape.
It turned out that Hamas militants, proud of their handiwork, high on their abuse of defenseless Jews, giddily filmed their war crimes, and shared the film with their cheering crowds back home.
And then those tapes got out into the world.
Even the New York Times had to admit it. Even the United Nations had to certify it. Even the most antisemitic, corrupt world bodies had to admit the truth, that the Hamas attacks on October 7 weren’t just quick, indiscriminate attacks, but personalized, dedicated, malevolent attacks including sexual brutality often too grotesque to write about.
No, it is no exaggeration to compare the Hamas attackers of October 7 with Speck and Gacy, or other monstrous criminals of old. Speck used knives to kill; Gacy used his hands, Hamas used motorcycles, knives and guns. There aren’t that many other differences.
But what of Charles Manson? He didn’t even commit the crimes himself. Where does he fit in this analogy?
Manson just stayed back at the headquarters and directed his “family’s” actions, keeping his own hands clean. He taught his followers to kill, gave the orders, and stayed home.
Not unlike the political leaders of Hamas.
Hundreds of miles away from the fray, the Hamas bosses sit at a comfortable negotiating table, talking with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, who then try to convince Israel to give these criminals a break, to stop the pursuit and let them live to fight another day.
What’s the difference between the crime boss who orders the hit from the corner booth at a fine restaurant, and the hit man who carries out the contract? Under US law, at least, we recognize that both are guilty.
And so it is in the Middle East today, as we are encouraged to negotiate with mass murderers who have spent their entire lives using their own people as pawns in a genocidal quest to seize the nation of Israel and wipe out its current inhabitants, “from the River to the Sea.” (Yes, that’s exactly what it means.)
Hamas is not a legitimate government. Their forces are not uniformed; they don’t subscribe to the Geneva Conventions. Hamas, which spent virtually every day of the 35 years since their founding in planning for the eventual destruction of Israel, merits none of the courtesies we give to real governments in peace talks. In fact, it is an insult to all the legitimate governments of the world, to grant the same status to Hamas.
So, how should we respond to the leaders of Hamas, when they insist on undeserved concessions?
Exactly the same way we would respond if the request came from Speck, Gacy or Manson.
Hamas tortured, maimed, raped and killed 1140 innocents on Oct. 7, 2023 alone.
The only difference between them is scale.
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer and speaker. A one-time Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. Read his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III).
Trump explains the secret behind his astonishing emotional resilience
If you’re an American of a certain age, you remember a commercial for a toy called “Weebles.” Weebles were little, egg-shaped figures, and the slogan was “Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.” I often think of that slogan when I look at Donald Trump’s remarkable emotional resilience in the face of the slings and arrows the Democrats have relentlessly hurled at him since he rode down that golden escalator. No matter how they push him around, he bounces back...and he explained the other day why that is.
In the Art of the Deal, Trump had had revealed that his response to attacks, always, is to fight back. This is a man who never backs down, no matter what, despite knowing that there are risks to this tactic:
When people treat me badly or unfairly or try to take advantage of me, my general attitude, all my life, has been to fight back very hard. The risk is you’ll make a bad situation worse, and I certainly don’t recommend this approach to everyone. But my experience is that if you’re fighting for something you believe in — even if it means alienating some people along the way — things usually work out for the best in the end.
Being a fighter is powerful, but it doesn’t mean that constantly fighting won’t make a person angry and embittered instead of ebullient and optimistic. Trump, however, while attacking his opponents in the Biden administration and the media, has remained a remarkably cheerful, happy person.
This is extraordinary given the war the progressive Democrat establishment (with significant help from RINOs and other Uniparty types) has waged against him. Trump has the honor of being the only president who has been impeached twice, who has been the subject of two sex trials, and who is the ongoing object of attempts to imprison him for non-crimes. And yet, like the Weeble, Trump will not fall down. (Or, to use another commercial analogy, he is that Energizer Bunny who keeps “going and going and going.”)
So, what’s Trump’s secret? It turns out that he’s a deeply philosophical man, although he presents that philosophy in basic terms. No academic jargon or psychobabble for Trump. He simply accepts the world as it comes:
The former president added that he doesn’t let his legal troubles bother him too much.
“If you care too much, you tend to choke. And in a way, I don’t care. It’s just you know, life is life,” he said.
There it is. If Trump were given to quoting the Bible, he might have said, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matthew 6:34.) At a visceral level, Trump understands that you take each day as it comes, dealing with that day’s needs and not worrying too much about the next day.
Again, this is astonishing. Every nation should be led by a man who loves it as passionately as Trump loves America and who has the emotional resources to stand up to the forces arrayed against him without becoming downhearted, bitter, or defeatist.
In his own way, Trump truly is a great man.
UN General Assembly just backed full ‘Palestinian’ admission
Last month, the United States vetoed a UN Security Council bid to recognize a “Palestinian” state. Today, however, the full UN General Assembly backed that same bid, with 143 nations out of the 193 total voting in favor of the idea (25 abstained). Think about that: Seventy-five percent of the UN is in favor of granting nationhood to a people whose raison d'être is to commit genocide against a UN nation. The world’s moral compass is broken and, as always, Jews are the canary in the coalmine. The rest of the civilized world will be next.
Al Jazeera proudly touted the news:
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has backed a Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to join and recommending the UN Security Council “reconsider the matter favourably”.
The vote by the 193-member UNGA on Friday was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full UN member – a move that would effectively recognise a Palestinian state – after the United States vetoed it in the UN Security Council last month.
The assembly adopted a resolution on Friday with 143 votes in favour and nine against – including the US and Israel – while 25 countries abstained. It does not give the Palestinians full UN membership, but simply recognises them as qualified to join.
[snip]
While the UNGA alone cannot grant full UN membership, the draft resolution on Friday will give the Palestinians some additional rights and privileges from September 2024 – like a seat among the UN members in the assembly hall – but it will not be granted a vote in the body.
In addition, as this tweet notes, the “Palestinian” body “will receive almost all rights of a full member state except the right to vote in the GA and to be a candidate for” various UN groups:
Currently, the only thing stopping the UN from recognizing a “State of Palestine” is the U.S. veto. However, given Biden’s increasingly open animosity toward Israel, it’s not entirely clear that Israel can rely on that veto.
The UN vote seems to extend only to the West Bank (i.e., the Palestinian Authority), but it’s a little unclear. Therefore, the following discussion covers both the people in Gaza and the West Bank (which is called the West Bank because it’s on Jordan’s West Bank, reflecting that Jordan is, in fact, the “Palestinian” nation to the extent that there is one).
For now, one can easily dismiss Gaza as a nation because it’s governed by a recognized terrorist group. However, the West Bank also isn’t a “nation” by any metric. Its government is not democratic, as evidenced by the fact that its President, Mahmoud Abbas, is in the 19th year of his four-year term. Even China and Russia make a better pretense of democratic elections. The West Bank also lacks a viable economy, something even Wikipedia concedes.
According to data at Macrotrends, in 2022, the West Bank and Gaza, which have a combined population of a little over 5.4 million people, exported goods valued at $3.54 billion, which is a pathetic output. Within the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority owns most of the means of production and prohibits competition.
Meanwhile, in 2021/2022, the U.S. gave almost $600 million to Gaza and the West Bank, while the European Parliament boasts that, between 2014 and 2020, it handed over €2.2 billion to Gaza and the West Bank (somewhere around $3 billion in today’s dollars). It’s hard to tell how much foreign aid money the West Bank receives because it hides the ball.
Of course, very little of that money goes to the people. Yasser Arafat was worth around $9 billion (around $14 billion in today’s dollars) when he died. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas was alleged to have amassed $100 million in 2013, less than a decade into his four-year term. He’s surely a billionaire by now, as are all his Hamas peers.
On top of the moral and financial corruption that characterizes a people without the will, desire, or need to sustain themselves, the “Palestinians” are also dedicated to Israel’s destruction and the death of its people. Hamas, as we know, is open about it, both in its charter and in statements from its leaders:
Ahmad Bahr, former Deputy Speaker, Hamas Parliament: “Kill them all without leaving a single one.” (2012)
Fathi Hamad, Senior Hamas official: “You have Jews everywhere and we must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing.” (2019)
Sheikh Hamad al-Regeb: “Bring annihilation upon the Jews. Paralyze them, destroy their entity.” (2023) and,
Yaya Sinwar, at this writing crawling through sewers in Gaza, announcing that Hamas is winning the war: “We’ll take down the border and tear their hearts from their bodies.” (2018)
The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has been more subtle, but its goals are no less deadly. It granted honorary citizenship to those who slaughtered Jews (the more brutally, the better), celebrated Adolf Hitler, and has funded terrorists for decades (that’s where some of your taxpayer dollars go). Abbas himself has denied the Holocaust.
The chants of “From the river to the sea” ring as loudly in the West Bank as they do in Gaza, and they mean the same: The destruction of Israel and the death of its Jews. Ahed Tamimi is the living embodiment of the West Bank mindset. Following the October 7 massacre, she wrote, “Come on settlers, we will slaughter you. We are waiting for you in all the cities of the West Bank. What Hitler did to you was a picnic. We will drink your blood and eat your skulls.”
In 2000, citizens in the West Bank slaughtered two IDF reservists and then engaged in a joyous blood ritual to celebrate. College students across America, knowingly or not, commemorate that moment today.
If Gazans and West Bankians were already a nation, that nation would be characterized as a “failed state.” Nevertheless, because of the deep antisemitic hatred for Israel that guides the United Nations, an organization that is primarily comprised of Muslim and socialist nations, the UN is on the verge of granting official recognition to two non-productive, non-democratic entities that exist to eradicate the world’s only Jewish state. Hitler would be proud.
Let’s hope that, on this matter, at least, Joe “Don’t Destroy Hamas” Biden can do the right thing.
(For those wondering why I keep putting “Palestinian” in quotation marks, it’s because the motley conglomeration of Arabs who drifted into Syria-Palestinia beginning in the early 19th century were never considered “Palestinians.” That was a term that referred to the Jews who continued living on the land after Rome destroyed the Kingdom of Judea and renamed the land Palestine in honor of the Philistines. See here for more information. The term “Palestinian” was a 1960s construct to create a fake lineage to overcome the fact that the Jews had continuously occupied the same land for more than 3,700 years.)
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