via Just Another Coinkydink: There are so many coincidences. Don’t believe in conspiracy theory.
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- In September, Mitch McConnell announced that he would block a bill to lower prescription drug costs.
- By the end of December McConnell had raked in more than $50,000 in contributions from political action committees and individuals tied to the pharmaceutical industry.
- The bill that would have allow the federal government to negotiate prices for Medicare, restrict price hikes and limit out-of-picket costs.
- McConnell called this “socialist price controls.”
- 80% of Americans believe that it is only right to have the federal government negotiate prices with the Drug Companies.
- Mitch McConnell says no.
- Then,
- “On Oct. 16, McConnell received a $2,500 check from Takeda Pharmaceuticals’ political action committee, according to McConnell’s reports to the Federal Election Commission.
- The same campaign finance filings show that a few weeks after that, multinational pharmaceutical company Novartis’ PAC also sent $2,500 to McConnell. Then, a PAC for another pharma company, Emergent BioSolutions, kicked in $2,500.
- By the end of December, McConnell’s campaign reported, he had received at least $30,000 more from the corporate political action committees of Bluebird Bio ($2,500), Boehringer Ingelheim ($5,000), Greenwich Biosciences ($2,500), Teva USA ($10,000), and UCB ($2,500).
- According to filings from his Bluegrass Committee leadership PAC, Merck & Co. also contributed $5,000 to support McConnell and Sanofi donated $2,500.
- Over that time period, McConnell’s campaign also received $5,000 from Gilead Sciences CEO Daniel O’Day, $2,000 from Amgen lobbyist Helen Rhee, and $5,600 from his former policy director and current Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America registered lobbyist Hazen Marshall
- Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Gilead Sciences, Merck, Novartis, Sanofi, Takeda, Teva, and UCB are all members of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which has said the bill would have a “devastating effect on the industry” and would cause fewer treatments to be developed.”
But, least you all be consumed by CONSPIRACY THEORIES, all claim that there is no connection between the donations to McConnell and “positions taken on specific legislation.”
Please, don’t be a fool. Vote Republicans out of office. We have to end this government by corporations. And, just another plea: don’t let the words: “I don’t believe in conspiracy theories” come out of your mouth. Do you know how much money these corporations and the right have spent to have that scripted statement come out of our mouths?
the American Independent (2/18/20) https://americanindependent.com/mitch-mcconnell-pharmaceutical-industry-donations-prescription-drug-costs-senate-gop-republicans/
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In this podcast from the Majority Report, Sam Sedar talks to the Democrat challenging Chris Coons in Delaware. Coons first came on my radar screen when he did a deal during the Kavanaugh hearings with Jeff Flake. The deal was for an “investigation” by the FBI into the allegations of other women accusing Kavanaugh of sexual impropriety. This “investigation” was so circumscribed that it failed to even interview some of the woman accusing Kavanaugh. This “investigation” provided a number of people cover to vote for Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Then, after putting off watching “The Family” the Netflix documentary on Jeff Sharlett’s book “The Family” because I knew it would drive me crazy, I was amazed to see Chris Coons all over it. Coons is an active participant in this Christofacist organization.
Coons if one of those democrats who goes on television and assumes this holier-than-thou attitude about “bipartisanship.” This bipartisanship evidently includes already conspiring with Republicans to block progressive economic policy which might be implemented by a Bernie Sanders presidency.
Chris Coons is a snake in the grass and we must get him out of office.
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I don’t know how many more days like this I can handle.
Roger Stone, convicted for witness tampering, lying to Congress and obstructing an official proceeding was today sentenced to 40 months in prison. The media immediately turned the judge, who rejected an initial Justice Department recommendation that Stone get between 7 and 9 years, into a hero.
Ari Melber on MSNBC (who evidently considers himself the Consoler in Chief) once again had guests on to tell the American people that the judicial branch is holding steady, the last bastion of integrity and justice. The institutions, so he claims, are holding.
Well, I’ve got news for Ari F…ing Melber, the institutions are not holding. The executive branch is a criminal enterprise masquerading as a government (Sarah Kenzior), the Congress is toothless and being led by the nose by a collection of thugs who are either being bought off or extorted or who are just so craven for power they will do anything. This same group of thugs is appointing new federal judges at breakneck speed. Their nominees are so inept and ignorant they would never ever get near a courtroom as a judge unless there were a thoroughly corrupt administration shoveling them into lifetime positions. The media is controlled by corporate interests and mediocre star reporters who laugh and joke their way through crisis after crisis after crisis. The institutions are crumbling before our eyes.
Neither the corporate press nor the members of Congress are brave enough to see what’s happening and convey the seriousness of the situation. The institutions are holding, they say. Nothing to see here. It will all be alright.
It reminds me of something that happened to me in Scotland years ago. I went along with a friend to a house where the father of the family had thrown himself out a window. Fortunately, he fell into the lovely Scottish garden below. I was charged with sitting with the young son. At some point I said: It’ll be alright. The kid’s head snapped around and he stared at me with incredulity and contempt. “Alright,” he said. “Alright? My father just jumped out of a window.” I nodded. “You have a point.” I said.
Sentencing for white collar (political and corporate) criminals is already an obscene joke in this country. Take a look at Jesse Eisinger’s recent (and totally ignored) book “The Chickenshit Club.” Eisinger details what happens these days to prosecutors who try to aggressively prosecute white collar criminals. It’s an endeavor which is against their career interests. Most white collar (corporate and political) criminals are not prosecuted. The Justice Department almost always does deals with their attorneys before they come to trial. A trial is considered time-consuming, expensive and unnecessary. Smart prosecutors are expert negotiators and deal makers. As Eisinger points out, not only have prosecutors learned that they put their careers on the line if they fail to negotiate a deal, the institution itself has lost the expertise to prosecute cases and take them to trial.
Line prosecutors in the Stone case, though, did go to trial. These prosecutors risked their careers but they proved their case and then recommended a sentence that was squarely in the middle of (already lenient) sentencing guidelines. Their reward? William Barr intervened, overruled them and after they resigned in protest sent his cronies into court to claim that DOJ had reconsidered the sentence recommendation and decided a lesser sentence was appropriate.
Then, when most of us who are sane and love the law and the concept of justice noticed, when something like 2000 former DOJ officials wrote a letter of protest, Barr sent his minions back into court to say that it had all been a misunderstanding.
Nobody who has a brain can mistake this series of events for anything but what it was – an attempt by Barr and Trump to see if they could simply throw caution to the wind and direct the sentencing of one of Trump’s buddies. They tried, they got some push back, and they backed off to some extent. But, make no mistake about it. They will try again, and they will probably succeed. This is (like the pardons) a softening of the ground.
Because of this, what was needed from the courts was a strong statement that high-level government officials cannot just dictate prosecution and sentencing. What we got was the same “chickenshit” response from Jackson we saw previously from Mueller (who defined his investigation so narrowly it could not really be effective). Jackson compromised, caved, backed down.
Earlier in the day, Seth Abramson tweeted that Trump used professionalism against people. He predicted that Jackson would give Stone a lenient sentence in the name of being “reasonable,” or “fair” or “unbiased” or “professional.” In doing so, she failed to send a message that the justice system is going to fight.
This morning, when I first heard the reporting that she was talking tough in court, I knew we were in big trouble. In highly publicized cases like this, when judges talk tough, they sentence light.
“What did you expect.” My partner said to me as I was pacing around the house indignant at the lenient sentence and the reaction of the corporate media.
“I know, I know” I responded “but it’s like knowing somebody’s going to die and having it actually happen.”
“You thought you might be wrong?”
“I was hoping, hoping I might be wrong.”
But, I was not wrong. Of course, I was not wrong.
Tuesday night, Ari Melber had Melissa Murray on his show and she told a story about lecturing students. She was talking about Nixon vs. Fitzgerald. She told her students that in immunizing the president from civil suits the courts did not make him a king. He was still subject to other checks – the impeachment process, the free press, the effect on his legacy. Her students, 112 men and women learning to be lawyers, laughed at her. Well they should have. I would have laughed at her.
Murray, as much as I love her, is another of those people (like Joyce Vance, Chuck Rosenberg and others) who’s identity is bound up with believing a fairy tale. That fairy tale is that there are people with integrity who will stand up to injustice, corruption and the destruction of democracy. The fairy tale is that these people will step up and save us. They will not. We live in a society largely made up of conformists, of cowards, of people who are too timid and too comfortable to rock the boat. Their careers and their inflated salaries are more important to them than their county, democracy or justice.
Jackson said in her decision today that the truth matters. Maybe, but justice evidently does not.
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Bill Barr wrote a letter to the Trump administration auditioning for the job of Attorney General. Barr decided at some point that Trump could be used to usher in an age of quasi-religious authoritarian government in the United States that people like him have been working to bring about for decades. He sees himself as carrying out a mission and he will not resign because he is disapproved of by DOJ officials, prosecutors or judges. He, like Trump, has no shame.
In an article (12/5/19) by Damon Linker, entitled “William Barr is shockingly clear about his authoritarianism,” Linker points out that:
In his “…October 11 speech at the University of Notre Dame,” Barr “…embraced a deeply anachronistic vision of religion in American public life. It was a story of a morally upstanding Republican majority upholding biblically based Judeo-Christian piety and righteousness against an aggressive minority faction of liberals and progressives who use positions of cultural and political power to impose an agenda of moral relativism on the nation.”
People like Barr believe that “…it’s crucially important for the future of American democracy that this (Barr’s) side prevail in its battle against godless relativists…” In doing so, “Barr was providing a justification for using all the powers of the federal government to bring about that outcome.” Just think about that. William Barr is providing a justification for using all the powers of the federal government to bring about” the outcome he advocates.
If any more evidence is needed, five weeks after the Notre Dame speech, “…came Barr’s even more alarming speech to…The Federalist Society. Here he described the presidency (and because of that, American self-government itself) as under siege by Congress and the courts. The greatest achievement of the American constitutional framers, he claimed, was the creation of a strong, independent, and unitary executive. And yet the liberals and progressives in charge of these other branches of government do everything in their power to hobble and weaken the presidency, which should, and will, do everything it can to reaffirm its distinctive powers and prerogatives.”
According to Barr, Trump “…would ideally also be free…to impose the travel ban, end DACA, add a citizenship question to the census, and make American foreign policy in Eastern Europe serve his personal whims and conspiratorial obsessions without having to face any pushback from Congress or the courts. No subpoenas. No irritating injunctions. No pesky Freedom of Information Act requests. No endless investigations. Trump would simply lead, and everyone else would follow.”
Then, “at the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service in Policing….Barr made a point of singling out those “communities” that fail to show “the respect and support that law enforcement deserves.” Those communities that don’t express the proper “support and respect,” he warned ominously, “might find themselves without the police protection they need.”
“It’s hard to read that passage without hearing it as a threat to minority (and especially African American) communities that have taken a stand in recent years against police brutality and excessive force….”
“It would be hard to think of a purer expression of the authoritarian mindset than this statement.”
“But Barr’s statement isn’t just an expression of authoritarianism. It’s also a reflection of the mob-boss mentality that prevails in the administration Barr serves with such abundant loyalty and enthusiasm….That isn’t how the rule of law is supposed to work. It’s the way authoritarian regimes, crime families, and robber gangs work. Unfortunately, it’s also how the president and his henchman at the Justice Department would very much like American government to work, from the Oval Office on down to the streets of our cities.”
“It’s up to the rest of us to show them both that we don’t share their admiration for rule by thug.”
See “William Barr is shockingly clear about his authoritarianism.” (12/5/19) Damon Linker.The Week.
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This is a spoken edition of an Intercept Podcast.
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- The McCabe prosecution has evidently been dropped. Commentators from the law enforcement community are saying that this probably could have been announced months ago, but was done right now for PR purposes, to detract attention away from the disgusting authoritarian take over of the Justice Department being orchestrated by William Barr. McCabe says he has never seen a similar case like this go on as long as it did. According to a number of sources, a grand jury refused to indict McCabe months ago.
- On to other horrors…
- Judy Shelton, Trump’s nominee as Fed governor, faced intense questioning from Democrats at her confirmation hearing. Sherrod Brown said that Shelton has “alarming ideas.” Evidently the alarming ideas she has professed in the past have all disappeared in her current testimony so that she can get the job as Fed governor. Her views on “central bank independence, the gold standard and whether the money that people deposit at banks should be insured” are outrageous. (CNBC). Shelton claims her ideas are just thinking “outside the box.” Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama, described Shelton’s change of heart as a “confirmation conversion.” Essentially what is happening is that Shelton is lying to get the position.
- As just one example of Sheldon’s thinking, she said in the hearing that FDIC insurance is bad because Banks should take the hit for failure. But, it’s not banks that take the hit, it’s us.
- William Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to “scrutinize the criminal case against…[Michael] Flynn…” Barr has also installed outside prosecutors to review the handling of other politically sensitive national-security cases. The reporting is that these newly appointed prosecutors have been “grilling” line prosecutors in the Washington office about different cases. Barr recently installed a close aide (puppet), Timothy Shea, as interim U.S. attorney in DC.
- Robert Mueller not only defined his role so narrowly he could not really investigate what happened in 2016, he also refused to do his job and passed these cases off to other prosecutors who were even more subject to Barr’s pressure. Mueller was part of the cover up.
- Good Morning America.
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MORNING THOUGHTS
MSNBC is no longer a news channel. It is a channel where the corporate Democratic strategists talk to each other and try to convince the rest of us that what they want to be true is true.
Morning Joe was devoted today to everything about every candidate in New Hampshire except the front runner, Bernie Sanders.
Early in the program, MSNBC posted a chart showing Sanders as the front runner and his steady line as the front runner in New Hampshire. So, was the conversation about Sanders? Of course not. It was about Buttigieg and Klobuchar. According to the panel, the campaigns of Klobuchar and Buttigieg were taking off. They are the “candidates on the move.”
John Heileman had to try to make Sanders’ steady lead sound like it was a negative. He said that Sanders was in the lead, but he was just “sitting there.”
Scarborough (who helped Trump get elected) talked about Biden being in the “second tier” in the polls. If, he added, you BELIEVE IN THE POLLS. Morning Joe and the panel have been touting polls for months showing Biden leading, but all of a sudden, when he’s in fourth or fifth place, Joe has to add “if you believe in the polls.”
(Note: I would just like to add that Scarborough and the dreadful Mika were at Mara-la-go AFTER the 2016 election. Their break with Trump came after he outed their adulterous affair.)
O.K. then, we have the panel trying desperately to rehabilitate Biden, just like always. They tried to make excuses for Biden’s lack of ability to raise money at the grassroots. Well, one said, he is old school. He “can’t raise money online.” Adrienne Elrod (one of the Clinton mean girls who is still incapable of expressing anything but contempt and resentment at Bernie Sanders because he dared DARED to run against Clinton) had to add that Biden didn’t really “plan to run well” in Iowa, i.e., he didn’t really try. (This is the best excuse she could come up with?)
Elrod then adds that Biden also doesn’t expect to run well in New Hampshire, already trying to dampen expectations before the primary. Talking about the Biden campaign, she says “they want to move on.” Want to move on? Where the hell to they expect to move on to? Where do they expect to win? This is the man that @MSNBC pundits have been telling us was the front runner for months.
Then, MSNBC shows us a Biden campaign ad (when was the last time they showed us a Bernie campaign ad?) and say that the problem is that Biden isn’t being allowed to be Biden. In the ad, Biden contrasts what are supposed to be his best contributions to history, with the most trivial things Buttigieg has ever done. The panel argues that this ad and these little episodes with Biden, where he acts like an entitled ass, are to be blamed on his campaign not letting him be himself. The Dreadful Mika has to add that Biden would never respond with contempt and derision if he was in a room with a former Mayor (like Buttigieg) who was touting his accomplishments. Jesus. We are supposed to believe that the ad made by his campaign, approved by him is “not Biden.” Those little episodes (pointing fingers at the chest of voters, telling one she’s a liar, acting like a pathetic old man pretending to be a hard ass) are not Biden. That’s ignorant. Those episodes are Biden. That’s what he is, a resentful, entitled, defensive old man who thinks he’s owed being president. (Remind you of anybody?)
Then, Morning Joe announced their guests for the morning, James Carville, David Plouffe, Klobuchar and Bennett. A progressive is in the lead in New Hampshire. Any Progressives? Hell no, a show full of people who despise Bernie Sanders and everything he stands for.
Then, we must hear about Bloomberg and how he is “driving Trump crazy.” What evidence is there for this? Who’s ass do they pull this stuff out of? Everybody on the panel agrees. Oh, they slobber, Bloomberg is “tougher” than Trump, “richer” than Trump. Bloomberg’s money will be the “great equalizer” in the race. When was a rich man running against another rich man ever considered a “great equalizer?” Joe Scarborough obviously enjoys bragging about how much more money Bloomberg has than Trump.
(Note: This is where we are folks. The obvious delight with which Scarborough describes Bloomberg’s wealth just tells you everything about him.)
Elrod says that Bloomberg is “still the most electable” candidate for many Americans. Again, who’s ass did she drag that out of? What evidence is there for that? She would rather choke than say such a thing about Bernie even though there is much more evidence that the same statement about Bernie.
The panel ended with a discussion of the “fear” that the populace has about the current crop of candidates. What they are communicating is that they have a deathly “fear” of Bernie Sanders. All of them know that Sanders and his people would never let them get near the White House if he was elected. That’s what they are scared of.
I can’t watch MSNBC anymore. The only reason for watching is to document the almost complete slide into corporate Democratic promotion as the Party and the party elite face the terror of people, real people, exercising their rights and fighting for their rights.
Turn over to CSPAN and you can watch Bernie giving a speech in New Hampshire. The reason the corporate media doesn’t ever show you Bernie unless they have to is that they are terrified people will see what a real candidate is like, a candidate who believes in what he is saying, a real person, fighting, perhaps giving his life, to fight for regular people, for the changes that will give regular people an opportunity to take some benefit from a society they contribute so much to. Please listen to Bernie Sanders. Please stop listening to MSNBC and CNN.
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Listen to what Dennis Kucinich has to say about the “soul of the Democratic Party.”
In this podcast by journalist Robert Scheer, Kucinich and Scheer talk about:
-whether the Democratic Party has a soul. Kucinich says he’s not sure that it does anymore
-Clinton, as a public official, supporting interventionism and regime change.
-the Clinton administration opening the country up for Wall Street and turning its back on the policies of the New Deal.
-the fact that foreign policy needs to be part of every discussion of domestic programs. We cannot support adequate domestic programs when we are funding endless wars.
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You can hear an interview with the author by listening to the program “On Contact,” by Chris Hedges, RT Television. 2/1/20.
Flint, Michigan is not the only community to have drinking water problems. Especially in small towns, the EPA exempts water systems from adequate testing.
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https://www.linktv.org/shows/foreign-correspondent
This documentary details the effects of the Chernobyl disaster locally. Unsafe nuclear reactors still operate. Tourists called “stalkers” pay money to be sneaked into the most unsafe areas for a thrill. Some people from small villages have moved back to contaminated areas. There has been a rise in tourism to this area because of the HBO series.
Law, Power, and Justice 