Ethics and principles are pesky things.  They never go away, and can rear up and bite you when you least expect it.

Such should be the case for Mike Bettiga, former President of the Wisconsin Pharmacy Examining Board who has been asked by Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights to testify at a hearing on Tuesday, December 6 on the Express Scripts/Medco Merger.

Mr. Bettiga, a pharmacist by trade, is now Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Shopko Stores, a retail chain headquartered in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  Shopko has 135 stores in thirteen northern tier states and California, and a robust retail pharmacy division.

Express Scripts and Medco Health Solutions are two of the country’s largest pharmacy benefit managers – companies that administer prescription drugs benefits for insurers, large employers, government agencies and unions.  The two recently proposed a merger which is currently under review by our government.  Proponents claim the merger would provide economies of scale, which, in turn, would lower consumer costs.

Opponents, which include some drug store chains, have used trendy Occupy Wall Street-lite catch phrases such as “windfall profits,” “corporate control,” and the dreaded “wasteful mail order spending problem” to bolster their anti-merger case.

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To many conservatives, it may seem surprising that Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) would echo antitrust concerns in his aggressive questioning of Google Chairman Eric Schmidt during this week’s hearing of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights. Isn’t that more of a lefty thing? Well, yes and no. The left indeed tends to be altogether too, er, liberal in its use of anti-trust laws to control big business. But conservatives also need to guard America against bad policies and domineering, unfair businesses practices that distort markets and ultimately punish consumers.

I believe this is where Sen. Lee was coming from in his line of argument against Schmidt.

Antitrust aside, Google has danced very close to the line in terms of profiting from other companies’ property rights, for example. In the eyes of many experts, Google also has violated consumer privacy. It has heavily influenced public policy to protect and enhance its bottom line at the expense of other companies. Surely it’s worth asking if Google’s business, lobbying and legal strategies pose threats free enterprise.

As Lee put it, “Whether or not Google formally qualifies as a monopoly under our antitrust laws, one thing is clear. Given its significant ability to steer e-commerce and the flow of online information, Google is in a position to help determine who will succeed and who will fail on the Internet.” American’s have a right to be concerned about the implications of Lee’s observation.

I do not begrudge Google its success. It is an amazing company with a superior search offering and a clever business model. At the same time, Google has built its market dominance and cash position, at least in part, by appropriating, some might say misappropriating, the copyrighted content of others. For instance, Google “scrapes” content from other websites and sells advertising based on that scraped content. Google has also become dominant on mobile phones with its Android operating system, which arguably uses patented technology owned by other companies. Google has also played fast and loose with trademark protection—selling ads around other companies’ trademarks.

Most notoriously, Google generated significant revenue from illegal pharmaceutical advertising—a practice to which it admitted and forfeited $500 million to avoid prosecution.

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Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) came to Washington as the a tea-party conservative with the goal of fixing the economy, addressing the debt crisis and curbing the growth of the federal government. It’s an uphill battle for the youngest member of the U.S. Senate, but one he’s prepared to fight.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the dismal unemployment numbers for June, a constitutional showdown over the debt ceiling limit and we say goodbye to a dedicated listener.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

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Why the GOP should reject tax increases, in one chart

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News today that the FTC is preparing to issue civil subpoenas as part of a broad anti-trust inquiry into Google’s business practices comes on the heels of a similar—and perhaps more in depth– threat from Congress.

In a letter sent to Google on June 10, the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights Senators Herb Kohl (D-WI) and Mike Lee (R-UT) requested the company provide one of their top two executives to testify at an oversight hearing exploring Google’s business practices.

But so far Google has refused and offered to send their legal counsel instead prompting the Senate subcommittee to threaten subpoenas to compel either Larry Page or Eric Schmidt to appear.

It will be interesting to see how Google responds to the FTC subpoenas. But in the case of Congress, Google’s sudden interest in privacy is irony at its best.

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Google’s growing influence with government is beginning to pay dividends for the company while leaving consumers and taxpayers on the short end of the stick.

Since donating over $1 million to the president’s campaign and building its online presence and fundraising base, the company has reaped continued returns on their investment, so much so, that Google’s former CEO is rumored to be on the shortlist to be the nation’s new Secretary of Commerce.

In order to pad its bottom line, Google made a conscious effort to grow its influence in Washington by hiring insiders and placing Google executives in the Administration. In a short period of time, Google has been rewarded with over 25 contracts with government agencies including the NASA, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency.

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Some say the world will end in fire and some say in ice.

But in Washington, a lot of people say it will end if we don’t continually raise the debt ceiling.

The statutory debt limit, or debt ceiling, represents the maximum amount of debt the federal government can carry at any given time. The limit was created in 1917 so that Congress wouldn’t have to vote every time the government wanted to increase the amount of debt (which was becoming a more and more frequent occasion). Since then, the Treasury Department has had the authority to issue new debt up to whatever the limit is to fund government needs. Last year, the limit was raised to $14.3 trillion, an amount that is about to reached.

As it approaches, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has said failing to raise the limit would likely mean the U.S. would default on its debt, creating “real chaos” in place of the fake chaos that’s out there now. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has said that failing to raise the limit would be “deeply irresponsible” and and Austan Goolsbee, President Obama’s chief economic adviser, has said that not raising the limit would create “the first default in history caused purely by insanity.”

Eh, maybe.

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Appearing Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-KY.) told host Christiane Amanpour he would push for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This is an idea whose time has come. In 1994, Republicans campaigned– and won — on a balanced budget amendment (as part of the Contract with America). Back then; the deficit was just $203 billion. Today, the national deficit is at $1.4 trillion (that’s roughly $3,500 for each American, and some $14,000 for each family of four in deficit spending just this year alone).

Most states require their elected officials to balance their budget each year, but no such requirement impedes the reckless spending of the United States federal government. A constitutional amendment would bar the federal government from spending more money than it brings in each year — and require a supermajority in order to raise taxes. This is not a radical idea, but the consequences of failing to enact such a measure cannot be overstated.

Fortunately, as evidenced by the Tea Party movement, there appears to finally be the political will required to get this done. Newly elected Republicans simply must realize they weren’t elected to merely “trim” spending or “slow down” the rate of government growth, but rather, to cut, de-authorize and balance the budget. (If they fail to grasp this fact, it will be a short and depressing two years).

It is also worth noting that the conservative movement is united behind this cause.

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From Politico:

Sen. Robert Bennett lost his party’s nomination during the second round of voting at the GOP state convention Saturday, making the three-term Senator the first incumbent to fall in this volatile midterm election cycle.

Bennett finished in third place in the crucial second-round vote, garnering just 26 percent of the delegates’ support, well behind Tea Party-backed attorney Mike Lee and businessman Tim Bridgewater, who will advance to the June 22nd primary.

“The political atmosphere obviously has been toxic and it’s very clear that some of the votes I have cast have added to the toxic environment,” Bennett acknowledged in a brief media availability with reporters shortly after he was eliminated in the second round of voting.

“Looking back on them, with one or two very minor exceptions, I wouldn’t have cast any of them any differently, even if I had known at the time they were going to cost me my career,” he continued.

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