This blog is not about the recent bailouts, even though they make for a good headline with the S-word on it. It’s not even about the health care plan.

It is about big business’s tendency to suddenly develop amnesia when they happily receive handouts, welfare payments and subsidies at taxpayer expense.

Take the pharmaceutical business. A large chunk of drug and other medical device discoveries are funded entirely by the National Institute of Health (NIH). The discovery work happens for years on end in a myriad series of mundane labs in Universities across the national. Researchers apply for and receive numerous grants to study the minutia of the human body. In rare cases, they stumble onto something useful. Sometimes, that useful discovery can be turned into something really useful that is worth hundreds of millions and in many cases billions of dollars in revenue.

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