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Healthcare Rights and Mandates Shaping Italy as M5S Party Garners Votes

Italy voteNote: We've been covering the visceral response from Italian citizens to vaccine mandates for school children.   Italians voted this weekend.  Their election is likened to Brexit and the American vote for Donald Trump as President. 

Italy election: Exit polls indicate big gains for populist and far-right parties – but with no clear winner

...The biggest worry for many would be a link up between the M5S, the League and the hardline nationalist Brothers of Italy. If the final vote tally reflects the projections that around 50 per cent of the electorate have voted for such populist parties, they would have enough votes to rule. There had also been talk before the vote of the possibility of a coalition between the M5S and the centre-left PD, although that may prove unworkable depending on whether the ruling party would stomach being the junior party in a coalition. 

A prominent deputy from M5S said early projections of the results suggested a “triumph” for the anti-establishment party.

From BBC:
Italy election: Early exit polls point to hung parliament

According to the recent article  Time article How Anti-Vaxxers Could Help Decide Italy's Election "The [Italian] skeptics tend to be “rich and older parents,” he says, “who are susceptible to both alternative treatments, like homeopathy, and conspiracy theories.”

Sounds familiar. You know, those educated folks who have the blessing of acquired skills to do the homework required to learn about medical choices and sometimes do NOT choose pharmaceutical interventions.  And who believe choice is critical in a democracy. Folks like our own Mark Blaxill, who went to Princeton and Harvard. Me, Kim, who went to a fine prep school and Boston College.  Our dear Dan Olmsted, who went to Yale. (Ok, I'm older, and definitely not rich, but you get the point.)

Comments

Hans Litten

The Pro Vaccine forces are really flexing their muscles now :
(its all about the vaccines isn't it ? and the global clearances)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/03/07/fellow-brexiteers-should-not-embrace-italys-crackpot-populists/

M5S for example, hold a hotchpotch of anti-establishment but otherwise incoherent policies. Among their more dangerous positions is their strong anti-vaccination stance, which relies on discredited and false studies that link the measles vaccine to autism.

Hans Litten

Well will you look at this :

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-05/debt-crisis-dead-ahead-italys-results-are-truly-forza-italia

Europe is headed for a breakup. But, after a year of watching the EU establishment work the polls just enough to maintain the status quo in the Netherlands, France and Germany I wasn’t expecting much from yesterday’s Italian elections.

But with turnout over 73% we got just that. Voters were clearly motivated to change the course Italy is on. Now, we knew that Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right coalition would do well alongside upstart Five Star Movement.

The question was always going to be, however, how well would they do?

It looks like it was much better than the polls wanted us to believe. Last week I told you the markets were getting nervous about this election. This weekend the news was all about how subdued the reaction was to the polling.

As if a major technical breakout to the upside on Italian bond yields in the face of furious ECB buying wasn’t a strong enough market response?

But, that’s doesn’t fit the plan to gaslight voters and traders to worry about the potential outcome here.

The League of 5-Star Gentlemen

It looks like Five Star Movement will take more than 30% of the final tally, which is a couple of points above where polling had it tracking when the blackout went into effect two weeks ago.

The bigger result is that of The League (formerly The Northern League) who came off their secessionist mountain and ran hard on a platform of euroskepticism and anti-immigration.

The most important person in Italian politics right now is The League’s leader, Matteo “The EU can go &%k itself” Salvini.

When the final votes are revealed, if The League out-polled Silvio “Establishment Stalking Horse” Berlusconi’s Forza Italia! then he has the hammer in coalition negotiations.

This is exactly the situation I was hoping for in this election. Because this paves the way for Salvini to pull out of the weak coalition with Berlusconi and form a stronger government with Five Star.

And at that point the price of Tums in Germany rises sharply on new demand. Because the ‘agita’ over Italy’s untenable banking and debt situation will be enormous.

But, if you want to know what the real issue is just look at this map of Italian unemployment.
1% GDP growth is not something to cheer about when you have this kind of capital destruction for half of a country. And with the euro above $1.20, just like Germany wants it, this is only making it harder for Italy to compete in world markets.
In other words, German strong-euro policy is creating the very election results now creating agita in Berlin.

Forza Populism!

Politicians are stupid.
They don’t know anything about currency, capital flow or substitution effects… except when it feathers their nests. But, when a policy is inconvenient to them they invariably blame ‘the market’ which is another way of saying ‘blaming the people.’

bob moffit

As I understand modern language .. the saying goes:

I was once susceptible .. now I'm woke.

annie

It confounds me that
in the face of all of this,
we still can't openly discuss
the scientific reality
of what we inject into infants.

In the face of all of this
In the face of all of this
In your/my/his/her/#metoo face.........

Jeannette Bishop

IMO "no clear winner" (if this is coming from corporate controlled or captured media) could indicate that some parties are not sure they can "count" up a result they want. I think we live in a time when "populism" (or possibly more accurately anti-inhuman-oligarchical-globalism) is much stronger than their often lately perturbed media lets on, but I'm not closely familiar with Italian politics or to what extent corruption weighs into the results there.

Angus Files

I think it s 40% for outright rule...C`mon the 5 star.They had 32% of the vote in the UK Express earlier and no official from EU would talk.... err.. sour grapes ,don`t ya think!!

They always talk down the voting bloc of the vaccine -autism link..I wonder why they try to keep us down...1-3 in the US that voted for Trump said there was a vaccine autism link in a poll 2016..

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/927026/Italian-election-2018-results-exit-poll-live-updates-Italy-general-election

https://ig.ft.com/italy-poll-tracker/
"With votes nearly evenly split among three groups — the centre-right, centre-left and Five-Star — the result could be a hung parliament. But political scientists say that if one of the groups reaches more than 40 per cent of the votes in the proportional system, it could also gain more than 65 per cent of the seats in the first-past-the-post component and, conceivably, a majority in parliament. That is the big prize."

Pharma For PRison

MMR RIP

David Weiner

John,

Thanks for adding that color. I do see these movements which promote decentralization as good for our cause, though I agree that they are a mixed bag.

michael

David I got a laugh out of that as well. They know how to pick them fightin words with the intended purpose to demean, stigmatize, marginalize, ridicule, humiliate, etc. I was once susceptible to believing that injecting mercury into children made you healthy. I was once susceptible to believing there were WMD's in Iraq because the media kept repeating it over and over. I was once susceptible to believing in the safety and efficacy of Vioxx. I mean every night during the TV news Dorothy Hamil skating across the ice you have to believe in it, don't you? If it's on TV you have to believe it, right? In fact there are about 60,000 people who were so susceptible to Vioxx, they're dead? I was once susceptible, but homeopathy cured my susceptibility.

But here's a question if the Brady Bunch measles episode where shown on TV right now, would the American Academy of Pediatrics be up in arms, have their panties in knot because its anti-vaccination and linked to Wakefield's discredited research? Would they write a TV station demanding the show not be aired because it clearly represents anti-science beliefs? Just a few more Monday morning chuckles with your coffee, hoping we are all still susceptible to humor.

Fred, don't get your panties in a knot as well. I know your come-back. You can laugh too.

John Stone

David

What you deduce from that is that Time magazine easily resorts to abuse. However, the two parties who were against mandates (and no doubt have lots of other baggage) were the major gainers. It is not clear how critical the vaccine issue was to this, but pretty certain that if it was important the global mainstream media would not be telling you. That said it does not look as if there will be a government any time soon, nor will it necessarily repeal mandates. It could well be seen as rebuff to the old centre-left coalition and its corrupt alliances. On the other, Beatrice Lorenzin, the instigator of the policy was re-elected in Modena.

David Weiner

The [Italian] skeptics tend to be “rich and older parents,” he says, “who are susceptible to both alternative treatments, like homeopathy, and conspiracy theories.”

Gotta laugh at the use of the term "susceptible" here, as though these folks were prone to some kind of disease.

How about “who embrace both alternative treatments, like homeopathy, and do not believe a word their government says.”

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