BRING ON THE PEOPLE'S PARTY - NOW!

The following article, which I am reproducing whole here, came from a March 7 posting over at former Labor Secretary Robert Reich's brilliant blog "http://robertreich.org/". I have taken the liberty of bolding where I felt necessary. My own comments will follow this piece at bottom and will appear in bolded italic. Enjoy!
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The Birth of the People’s Party
Monday, March 7, 2011

Look at the outrage in Madison, Wisconsin. Look at the crowds in DesMoines, Iowa. Look at the demonstrations in Indiana and Ohio and elswhere around America.

Hear what they’re saying: Stop attacking unions. Stop making scapegoats out of public employees. Stop protecting the super-rich from paying their fair share of the taxes needed to keep our schools running.

Stop gutting the working middle class.

Are we finally seeing average Americans stand up and demand a fair shake in an economy now grotesquely tilted toward the wealthy and the privileged? Are Americans beginning to awake to the fact that our economy now delivers a larger share of total income to the very top than at any time in living memory? That big corporations are making more money and creating more jobs ABROAD than in the United States?

That this concentration of income and wealth has so corrupted politics that corporations can extort whatever they want from the government — tax breaks, loan guarantees, subsidies — while the super-rich can take most of their income as capital gains (taxed at 15 percent), and the rest at the lowest top rate in 25 years? And that because of this our kids are crowded into classrooms, our streets and highways and bridges are falling apart, and our healthcare bills are out of control?

The Tea Party grew out of indignation over the Wall Street bailout — an indignation shared by the vast majority of Americans. But the Tea Party ended up directing its ire at government rather than at big business and Wall Street. Was this because billionaires Charles and David Koch and their like funneled money to the Tea Party through front organizations like Dick Armey’s Freedom Works, and thereby co-opted it?

Now we may be seeing the birth of a genuine populist movement. Call it the People’s Party. Like the Tea Party, the People’s Party doesn’t have a clear organization or hierarchy or single address. It doesn’t have lobbyists in Washington. It’s not even yet recognized by the mainstream media.

But the People’s Party seems to be growing in numbers and in intensity. And it’s starting to push elected officials — first at the state level — to listen and respond.
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I WHOLEHEARTEDLY support this creation of a new PEOPLE'S PARTY! I say, let it become as powerful and influential a faction within the Democratic Party as the Tea Party has become in the Republican Party! Conservative Republicanism failed this country way back in the 1920s. Foolishly, today's reactionary Republicans stubbornly cling to those thoroughly discredited, unfair, and HARMFUL "supply-side" and "free market" CRAZY economic beliefs and practices! Blue Dog Democrats, too cowardly or too conservative to behave as REAL Democrats used to, (being a strong force for econpmic change and fairness), have dragged the Democratic Party down. They have saddled it with heretical corporatist ideology. They have undercut the President's more progressive planks and weakened him politically, forcing him to make unnecessary and damaging overtures to, and compromises with, the reactionary Repulicans.

People are understandably frustrated. I share that frustration.

NEITHER PARTY REPRESENTS THE MAJORITY OF THE POPULATION ANY LONGER. The Republicans are ALL bought-out, corporate shills and represent only the religious right, big business, and the wealthiest 2% of the country. Scott Walker and his reactionary Republicans' actions in Wisconsin prove that this miserable party is bound determined to attack American workers to aid the rich. The Democrats have become impotent and no longer represent the poor OR The middle class, either. They, too, have become plutocratic puppets who are completely compromised by the oligarchy this country has become. Only a handful of progressives, notably Vermont Senator BERNIE SANDERS, Minnesota Senator AL FRANKEN, Ohio Senator SHERROD BROWN, and Oregon Senator RON WYDEN have shown any gumption at all, by consistently voting in favor of "normal, everyday, working Americans" who make up most of the remaining 98% of the population.

Writing in www.forbes.com, in an article called "Is Wisconsin the Real Republican Waterloo?", E.D. Kain says, "In Wisconsin, Democrats are already promising to step-up recall efforts. But the recalls are only a small part of what is likely going to be a huge anti-Republican backlash across the nation, as working Americans finally realize what that party actually stands for: a playing field heavily tilted toward the rich and powerful, toward corporate power, and against worker rights...And now conservatives have chosen public-sector workers and teachers as their hill to die on. They have followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and elected Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and various other Tea Party candidates. Heavily funded by big campaign donors like the Koch brothers and other corporate interests, the Republican party has made a concerted effort across the country to take on unions, public pensions, and social services for the poor...Republicans have a long history of union-busting and anti-labor rhetoric, but taking on teachers and cops is a big mistake. This blatant effort to weaken the Democratic party will have precisely the opposite effect...Now Scott Walker has given progressives their chance. This is the Democrats' chance to recapture that narrative, to turn the discussion back to the dignity of the middle class, to the importance of policies that do not simply push power and capital ever upward. THIS is the Republican’s Waterloo." PRETTY ASTOUNDING OBSERVATIONS FOR ONE WRITING FOR FORBES.COM!

NOW IS THE TIME! People are fired up and are now starting to recognize the threat the conservative Republicans pose to us all. This country needs President Obama and ALL Progressives to wean Democrats away from the timid Blue Dog and conservative influencees and unite under a new, MUCH more responsive, pro-labor, and progressive PEOPLE'S PARTY. The time is ripe for all progressives to flood Democratic Party caucuses next year and slowly replace the corrupting influences within, eventually filling them with progressive-minded PEOPLE'S PARTY activists instead! This would not only ensure the President's re-election, but it would free him from the confines he's been forced to operate under. When this occurs, I'll bet we see an invigorated President who will actually be able to accomplish just what voters need and really want, and what they expected when they elected him in 2008. Remember, the President started out with a much more progressive agenda. After lukewarm Democratic support and no support at all from Republicans, he grew more timid in his approach. I believe that, with an overwhelming new Democratic majority composed of a strong PEOPLE'S PARTY faction, he will return to the form he showed right after he was first elected.

Like Robert Reich, I, too, believe this to be a growing, GENUINELY populist movement in dire need of an activist launching. Will you join me in this push for a truly progressive alternative to the phony, Koch brothers-financed ultra-conservative Tea Party? Will you attend next year's Democratic caucuses, write repeated letters to the editor of your local paper, TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS AND CO-WORKERS, and post info about what you're doing to attract others on Facebook and Twitter? By doing so, we may just be able to completely reverse this long downhill slide the conservative Republicans have had this country on for the past 30 years!

This is NOT a move to radicalize the Democratic Party. Rather, it is a way to RESTORE it to the party it once was: a party deserving of respect, which will again actually deliver for its constituents (and the entire country), as it should!

JOIN ME, PROGRESSIVES! THIS IS THE MOMENT WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!

SOME VERY ERRANT SUPPOSITIONS!

OK, you got your extended Bush tax cuts for the rich, and you have established control over the House of Representatives, and you've been Speaker of the House for 2 days. NOW, WHERE ARE THE JOBS, MR. BOEHNER?


We hear Republicans, their Tea Party faction, and Blue Dog Democrats all telling we we've got to cut back on spending and "we don't have the money" for further stimulus programs to create jobs. Free market enthusiasts all tell us with the Bush tax cuts for the rich now extended two more years private industry will once again be creating jobs.

I say that is errant supposition number 1, and a lot of poopycock!

By looking at the chart below, you'll see we have PLENTY of money! The only problem is, it is very disproportionately in the hands of our country's richest 1% elite, doing NOBODY else any good! And keep in mind the chart only goes through 2007---the situation is even more extreme now!

Source: mybudget360

That's right, people. As of just under a year ago, the richest 1% owned a whopping 42% of all of our national wealth. The next highest 4% controlled 27%; the following 5% controlled another 11% of our wealth; the next 10% controlled 12%, and THE BOTTOM 80% CONTROLLED ONLY 7%!!! That figure of the top 1% has risen noticeably over the past ten years. As of 2001, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 51%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 84%, leaving only 16% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).

In addition, consider these facts:

1. An estimated 37% of the country is on food stamps!
2. Many wait until midnight on the last day of the month so their checks will clear to buy food at Wal Mart!

If we break the data down further we will find that 93 percent of all financial wealth is controlled by the top 10 percent of the country. That is why these people are cheering their one cent share increase while layoffs keep on improving the bottom line. But what bottom line are we talking about here? The Wall Street crowd would like you to believe that all is now good that the stock market has rallied 60+ percent. Of course they are happy because they control most of this wealth. Yet the typical American still has negative views on the economy because they actually have to work to earn a living (from mybudget360).

It is a sad fact that whenever anyone even broaches the subject of higher taxes for the wealthiest 1% he or she is immediately branded with trying to engage in "class warfare."

I say that is errant supposition number 2!

The REAL perpretators of class warfare have been the richest elite themselves! Ever since 1981, they have fired salvo upon salvo on the middle class and poor, and today the richest elite are bolder and more contemptuous of those beneath them than ever before! They want it all to themselves and will now do anything to get it. It began with their ridiculous and now discredited "trickle down economics", then came freezes in pay scales, and then it regressed to deliberately outsourcing millions of good-paying American jobs to cheap, foreign slave-labor markets, and also to the importation of cheap, illegal labor to break the very backbone of any vestige of unionism. Today, the middle class is rapidly shrinking and may soon disappear altogether. They are not content with even all of this: now they want to repeal the estate tax and are trying to turn public opinion against it by calling it an unfair "death tax" and insinuating that the government will try to grab everyone's estate for taxation, not just those over $5 million. But that should surprise no one, really. Time and again they have lied and distorted any pro-people government measure into one that is somehow, someway "bad" for the general public.

Errant supposition number 3: The government does not create jobs.

During the Great Depression, the New Deal launched a LOT of jobs! Some of the buildings, parks, dams, and roads exist to this very day! Postal workers are government employees. So are many teachers, policemen, and firemen. The truth is, the government DOES create jobs, and they are jobs HERE, not outside of our borders. In addition, they pay relatively good wages, unlike the outsourced jobs now so in favor among conservative and Tea Party Republicans, huge corporations, and free marketers, and we could use a lot more of them to help rebuild our decaying infrastructure.

If the rich send jobs overseas to increase their profits and protect their holdings, that's just "good business". But if workers try to unionize or go on strike to protect their wages and benefits, they are greedy---errant supposition number 4.

We have employed a double-standard in this country for far too long when it comes to workers' vs. businessmen's rights and income levels. It is inherently unfair to always give those in business all the advantages and rights while neglecting or diminishing those of evertday working people. And the implied attitude that an employer can do what he or she damn well wants just because they have capital invested in a particular endeavor places all the advantage in that person's favor, and that is not fair, either. Although many Republicans may disagree, money does NOT guarantee supremacy! Not only that, but we Americans tend to believe that a business-owner can set his or her own pay scale, but all the workers' pay rates must be controlled and limited. There should be a limit or common sense used for BOTH extremes - not the sky is the limit for one and pay as little as you can get away with for the other.

Errant supposition number 5: The government should stay out of the affairs of business.

Those who argue for such insanity are foolhardy indeed. For it was the LACK of government involvement in the economy which helped create the Great Depression as well as the mortgage meltdown crisis which brought on our current Great Recession. It was lack of proper government regulation that brought about $4.00 per gallon gasoline, too. Government must ALWAYS have a say in what goes on in the economy, for government is the only buffer ordinary people have to protect themselves against the excesses of greedy, organized capital!





And the sooner Dick Armey, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and the rest of those laissez-faire Tea Party types learn that, the better!

SANTA'S BOZOS OF 2010

2008 WINNER: ROD BLAGOJEVICH
2009 WINNER: RICHARD HENNE
2010 WINNER: Keep reading...



Santa's been feeling a little queasy lately. With all the upheaval in American politics these days, it's left him kind of dumbfounded. First, the Wall Street bankers took the bailout money Santa had given them to shore up the economy and kept almost all of it for themselves. Then, the 2010 midterms have left him with a whole new flock of prospective Bozos and Bozettes to mull over. Still, the show must go on, so here is the list of THIS year's candidates for Santa's Bozo of the Year Award.

DISHONORABLE MENTION: The Wall Street bankers. As a result of the President's stimulus funding, many large Wall Street banks have piggishly added to their own bottom line rather than lending to smaller banks for the purpose of job creation. Bank of America, for one, has become 138% bigger almost overnight. No wonder they can now afford to bombard us with propagandistic TV ads about the credit card protection they offer or how they are supposedly helping small business get loans. Santa says "Bah, humbug!" to these lying morons. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) also caught Santa's notice when he voted recently against the recent Wall Street reform bill, as did Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) when he decided to hold up the government from voting on the extension of unemployment benefits earlier. That made all of these entities suitable for this award.


FOURTH PLACE FINISH goes to the tag-team tandem of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, both of whom campaigned for Tea Party candidates and urged Americans to begin a new revolution, this time voting AGAINST duly-voted in government officials. Both of these Bozettes even encouraged people to converge on Washington out of protest, as if they weren't already being represented - by their own representatives!

THIRD PLACE also goes to a pair of Bozettes, namely unsuccessful Senate candidates Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle. Santa had absolutely no trouble adding them to the list: One came out with a television ad claiming "I am not a witch", while the other made a ridiculous statement about constituents being so angry they would be understood if they began to practice their "Second Amendment solutions." And BOTH of these idiots thought they could skate to high political office while ignoring the press and not taking any direct questions! (Guess constituents exercised their "voting rights solutions" against THEM)!



SECOND PLACE for this year's award goes to that nefarious group known as the Blue Dog Democrats. This band of wimps, instead of standing up to conservative Republicans and behaving and voting like real Democrats, caved in all over the place and abandoned their President on one issue after another. As a result, Santa has awarded most of them with retirement from Congress!


RUNNER UP for the award this year goes to the entire Republican Congressional caucus for their collusion and treachery in obstructing and opposing every single aspect of the President's agenda all year long. They have repeatedly voted en masse against everything the President has pushed for, and in the process have circumvented the Senate's rules of filibuster into a weapon of mass obstruction. They have repeatedly held out for unnecessary tax cuts for the rich which add greatly to our deficit and don't do a thing to create jobs. They have held hostage very needed unemployment benefits for the many millions of out of work Americans; Americans who are out of work primarily because of economic policies THEY promoted during the past 10 years! Santa can only shake his head at the thought of more of these people coming to Congress early next year!

Which now brings us to this year's winner, and Santa's BOZETTE of 2010:
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THE "COLON LADY!" We have all seen this moronic woman on as she gets off of the the people-mover at an airport saying confidently "diarrhea-constipation-gas-loading - that's me!" As if ANYBODY IN THE WORLD would ever call themselves "the colon lady" or proudly and publicly admit to such a thing! Now, mind you, I'm not the least bit squeamish about these matters, but this one takes the cake! Another ad features her surrounded by several women when one of them, a REAL nerdy-looking BIMBO in ugly horned-rimmed glasses, presses forward to say "I love your work!" Well, I certainly don't, and neither does Santa. In fact, he has given the "colon lady" a full set of Ex-Lax disguised as candy bars for her to enjoy over the holidays, and he sincerely hopes the ad campaign team for Phillips Colon Health will immediately stop polluting our airwaves with this absolute nonsense!

Online, one person named "dchristie" has even commented 'Instead of people who take drugs being criminalized, shouldn't there be a law against people who run ads for Philips Colon Health?

I mean, they even have a character in the ads called The Colon Lady who is a crusader for 'colon health' with a clarion call against 'bad gas, constipation, bloating and diarrhea'. Their motto is 'I'm good to go'.

They run this annoying garbage all day with particular emphasis on a blitzkrieg campaign schedule at dinner time on every fucking network.

This is bloody fascism.

I feel like getting a machine gun.'


dChristie, so do I, but after all, it IS almost Christmas, so we'll both have to suck it in and bear it, like we do with Republicans...





Have a very Merry Christmas, everybody! Be sure to pray for and help the needy any way you can! The Republicans have given us far too many of them!

UNCHANGED SINCE COLONIAL DAYS

MANY thanks to Howie Klein for this brilliant piece which appeared Saturday in his outstanding blog Down With Tyranny! (http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/)

Saturday, May 15, 2010
You Say You Want A Revolution? Conservatives Haven't Changed Since Colonial Days
Blanche Lincoln & Samuel Seabury, conservatives with ideas antithetical to American values

When reviewing-- at great length and over the course of several months-- Mike Lux's spectacular book, The Progressive Revolution: How The Best In America Came To Be, we often pointed out how conservatives were inevitably on the wrong side of history, starting with their opposition to the Declaration of Independence, to the American Revolution itself-- and did they ever hate the tea partiers-- and, of course, to the Constitution which granted suffrage to non-landowners and to "common" people. At the time of the American Revolution, almost half a million conservatives remained loyal to the British crown and many fought on the side of the Brits against the founding of a new independent republic. That was about 20% of the population at the time. After the war, over 60,000 white conservatives-- including many of the wealthiest landowners like the DeLancy, DePester Walton and Cruger families of the Hudson Valley and the Penn, Allen, Chew, and Shippen families of Pennsylvania-- left America for Britain or other British territories, like Canada and the Bahamas. Many of the richest southern conservatives took their slaves and fled to the West Indies. In his spectacular book, Conservatism in Early American History, Leonard Woods Larabee identified the traits that predicted anti-American attitudes among conservatives. It's still worth looking at those traits today when examining anti-American attitudes among today's conservatives. Needless to say, the top traits were greed and selfishness, the root motivators among most conservatives down through the ages.

In his book Threshold Thom Hartmann emphasizes that "[d]uring the Revolutionary War, virtually every person of great wealth left the United States... As the Constitution was being framed, one of the biggest issues was the debate over the best ways to keep in check the power of wealth." Unfortunately, corporate shills like Alexander Hamilton (think of him as the representative of Wall Street, a kind of combination of John McCain, Chuck Schumer and Joe Lieberman), Tench Coxe and Samuel Seabury and reactionary southerners-- yep; back then too-- worked hard, and effectively, to thwart that strain of revolutionary thought. Which is why, for example, we wound up with a Senate (modeled on the House of Lords), with slavery, with no voting rights for women and no guarantees of the individual liberties that were later addressed-- also to the hysterical opposition of conservatives-- by the Bill of Rights.

Today this same strain of conservatism completely dominates one political party, the Republicans, and had immense power inside the Democratic party (though the corporately-financed DLC and Blue Dog Caucus). Yesterday Bill Halter debated one of the most conservative-- and, as though it were a corollary, corrupt-- members of the Senate, Blanche Lincoln. He argued for giving the middle class a hand. She advocated for low estate tax rates for the few dozen families in Arkansas-- all her political contributors-- with estates worth over $10,000,000.

Tuesday Arkansas voters will decide between the middle class-oriented Halter and the sleazy corporate shill Lincoln. It should surprise no one that the Democratic Party Establishment, stinking in nearly as much corruption as the Republiucan Party Establishment, backs Lincoln. Wherever there's a contested primary Tuesday, the DCCC, the DSCC and the Democratic insider establishment is backing the more conservative candidate and the one most likely to suck up to Big Money corporate interests. In the U.K. last week, voters gave no party a mandate. The "winners," The Conservatives, walked off with an unimpressive 36% of the vote. 64% of the electorate rejected them. But the Labour Party, like the U.S. Democratic Party, has, in many cases, become too putrid and too beholden to corporate interests to bother with.

Aside from Arkansas, there are a number of crucial races pitting conservatives against non-conservatives. Pennsylvania Democrats will decide between a Republican calling himself a Democrat for convenience sake, Arlen Specter, and an actual Democrat, Joe Sestak. And in Kentucky, Democrats get to choose between Dan Mongiardo, an anti-Choice, anti-gay, anti-healthcare conservative tool, and Attorney General Jack Conway, who, like Halter, stands for solidly middle class values and aspirations. All three races are too close to call, although momentum is clearly against the three conservatives. You know which ones Blue America are backing, right?

SEND THIS VIRUS TO WASHINGTON!

"Let's take the profit motive OUT OF MEDICINE!"
- Manifesto Joe, Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues -

Enough is enough. We forgotten souls here in the hinterland - ordinary, average citizens all, are far removed from Washington, D.C., and it shows. The overwhelming majority of us don't have six or seven (or eight or nine) figure incomes, and we get taken pretty much for granted by wealthy business executives and our elected officials in Congress all the time. Our struggles apparently aren't understood, or mean very little to those people. They just don't get it.

But it's now time for that to change.

A number of our Senators and Representatives think there is nothing wrong with our health care system, but we know better. The Joe Liebermans, Blanche Lincolns, Tom Coburns, Mitch McConnells, Mary Landrieus, John McCains, Ben Nelsons, Evan Bayhs, Jon Kyls, Michele Bachmanns, Virginia Foxes, John Boehners, Pete Hoekstras, Mike Pences, and Eric Cantors in Washington all seem to think that the current system of for-profit health care delivery is the only way to go, even as it is unattainable for millions and other millions have been excluded from participating in it. These elected officials are evidently unconcerned that millions of others of us can no longer afford health insurance, or that its ever-rising costs are bankrupting individuals and businesses alike. These proponents of the free market apparently believe it is perfectly acceptable for health insurance and pharmaceutical executives to make millions of dollars in annual salaries while denying coverage to many, or pricing medical care and even prescriptions beyond a rate we average, everyday folks can afford to pay. They just don't get it. But WE do.

We understand very well that no one should have to choose between paying for needed drugs and eating, or between paying for medical bills and paying the rent. We understand that, while our wages are frozen or dropping, those of business executives and elected officials keep rising every year, and so do the costs of drugs and medical care we need, shooting up in price well above the rate of inflation. So I got an idea.

Let's give every Representative and Senator in Washington a direct look at the struggles we are now facing due to the rising, out of control costs of health care and prescriptions. ESPECIALLY THE CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS AND BLUE DOG DEMOCRATS WHO OPPOSE A PUBLIC OPTION TO HELP CONTROL COSTS. If you are unemployed and without insurance, can't afford health insurance, are elderly on a fixed income and can't afford your donut-hole in Medicare part D, have a pre-existing condition and are excluded from health insurance, or have had health insurance but were booted off it because your chemotherapy or other costs have become too high for your insurance company's liking, SEND YOUR REPRESENTATIVE A COPY OF THE LETTER BELOW (AS SHOWN BETWEEN THE DOTTED LINES), ALONG WITH AN ITEMIZED COPY OF YOUR HOSPITAL BILL, DOCTOR BILL, OR THIS YEAR'S PRESCRIPTION COSTS. In fact, copy and paste the letter between the dotted lines below and send it to everyone in your email address book and ask them to do the same. Just tailor the letter to fit your own circumstances, and send it off to Washington. Here it is:
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Dear Senator ____________ (or Representative __________):

I am one of your constituents and I desperately need your help. I only make $ ______ per week, and, as you can see from the medical bill I have included with this letter, I now owe $ _________ in medical fees. I want to be able to eat and pay for my rent, heating, and electricity, too, so I am asking a very big favor of you: WILL YOU PLEASE PAY THIS BILL FOR ME? BECAUSE I CERTAINLY CAN'T!

I understand the important need for hospitals, health insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies to make a good profit, but as you can see, I just can't afford to help them do that anymore. So will YOU help me do this by paying my bill?

Thank you, Senator _________ (or Representative __________). I really appreciate it!

Sincerely,
Your Devoted Constituent,

_________________________________

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We average, everyday, BROKE folks here in the hinterland have been struggling with the deadly virus of beyond-our-means drug and health care costs for far too long now. Perhaps if each of our elected officials gets literally bombarded and smothered with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of letters and medical bills from each of us across the country, it will finally dawn on them that the flawed for-profit health care system we have is being badly abused, and that the only real cure is a single-payer system like all other civilized countries across the globe have had for years! Let's make this letter go viral all across the internet, and LET'S SEND THIS VIRUS TO WASHINGTON!

A DEADLY PRESCRIPTION PROFIT OVERDOSE

"Let's take the profit motive OUT OF MEDICINE!"
- Manifesto Joe, Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues -

"Tax the very wealthy to make everyone healthy!"
- Vigilante, Sozadee, CA -



A disturbing piece by Duff Wilson has just appeared in the NY Times explaining how the nation's greedy, profit-obsessed pharmaceutical companies have sneakily raised prices on their brand name drugs a whopping 9% at the wholesale level over the past year, even as the Consumer Price Index has FALLEN 1.3% in the same period. This is significant because roughly 78% of all prescriptions sold are brand-name drugs.

Stephen Schondelmeyer, a professor of pharmaceutical economics at the University of Minnesota, has done cost analyses of the drug industry for AARP, the nation's premier advocacy lobbying group for the aged. He has compiled this data, which has been backed up by other Wall Street analysts. He is critical of this increase, as well he should be. Harvard economist Joseph Newhouse found similar increases happened as drug benefits were added to Medicare in 2006. He has said that such increases usually do occur in the face of new health industry legislation. But are they justiofied? Hardly.

Ken Johnson, the senior Vice President of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America trade organization, dismisses Schondelmeyer's criticisms and report as being politically motivated. Yet the numbers speak for themselves, Mr. Johnson, and they say you lie. Industry claims that these price increases are necessary to keep profits at a level needed to sustain proper research and development for new drugs, which is indeed a costly process, lose credibility when you consider that nearly 30% of new drug research and development costs are offset by us consumers and taxpayers in the form of federal tax breaks and subsidies. What these increased prices REALLY pay for are the ever-rising and exorbitant salaries paid pharmaceutical board members and the lavish marketing campaigns now employed constantly on TV to sell new and even established prescription drugs to consumers. That's why we are constantly bombarded with totally aggravating TV ads for Viagra, Levitra, Cialis, Zytec, Boniva, Lamisil, Crestor, and so many others. 30 years ago, far less costly and much less pervasive advertising was done not to consumers, but to physicians, as it should be. This push-pull marketing technique to get us to ask our physicians for specific brand name drugs is something WE are paying for - dearly - in the form of ever-higher prices. This is absolute nonsense!

Speaking of exorbitant industry annual salaries, I focused on the top 10 pharmaceutical CEO members' salaries in my August 17, 2009 post, "Top 10 Reasons Your Prescriptions Cost So Much", and, just as a brief reminder:
No. 1 was Bill Weldon of Johnson & Johnson at $29,500,000
No. 2 was Miles White of Abbott, at $28,300,000
No. 3 was Bernard Poussot of Wyeth at $25,000,000, and
No. 10 was John Lechleiter of Eli Lilly at $13,000,000.
Remember, everybody, these are just CEO salaries. Other board members were also paid salaries nearly as enormous. Such salaries are wholly unjustifiable and indefensible in a country where millions of people are now out of work, without health insurance, or are seniors on fixed incomes.

This industry increase occurs as pharmaceutical companies make a lot of ballyhoo about their voluntary pledge to cut 8% per year over the next ten years off the prices of prescription drugs as their way of complying with the spirit of proposed new health care reform legislation. It is as deceiving as a retailer who marks up his $500 suits to $600 overnight, and then the next day trumpets a "huge $100 off SALE!" As all of us know, this is just a dog and pony show these greedy manufacturers are putting on, as their price rises amply prove.


I CURRENTLY BUY AS MANY OF MY PRESCRIPTIONS AS I CAN ONLINE FROM CANADA, WHERE MY NET COST, EVEN WITH POSTAGE, IS SLIGHTLY MORE THAN HALF OF WHAT IS CHARGED HERE. I URGE YOU TO DO SO AS WELL. They are the exact same drugs manufactured by the exact same American manufacturers as you find here, but at roughly half the price. That, in itself, is a strong argument for a Canadian-style, single-payer health care system!

We Americans are getting a deadly prescription profit overdose from our piggish pharmaceutical industry which is killing our businesses, bankrupting our elderly and chronically ill, and benefitting ONLY very greedy and very overpaid business executives. Conservatives, Republicans, and a number of blue dog Democrats oppose a public option for health care which would exert strong downward pressure on drug prices. They obviously believe corporate profits are far more important than affordability of needed drugs for us taxpayers. Does this make sense to you? It certainly doesn't to me, and that's why these fools must be driven out of office and replaced by progressives in 2010!




Take a good loook at this...it's a picture of your personal and your company's hard-earned money being stolen by greedy wealthy pharmaceutical industry board members for their obscenely high salaries, bonuses, and profits.

THE MORNING AFTER

The great "bellwether" election of 2009 is over, and, regardless of how the Democratic or Republican Parties spin it, the end result was really a headache for both.


Yes, the Republicans recaptured the Virginia and New Jersey governorships, but they also lost a U.S. House seat they had held since before the Civil War. They will undoubtedly celebrate loudly and feed us a lot of ballyhoo about the election being a nationwide referendum against the Obama administration, but that is a load of hogwash, as voter exit poll surveys clearly showed. This was NOT a vote against Obama so much as a vote against an unpopular Democratic politician running a negative campaign in a state rife with corruption and unemployment (NJ), and a vote for a more personable candidate the public was warmer to than his detached, standoffish opponent (VA). Not only that, but BOTH states have had a long tendency of voting against the party holding the White House in gubernatorial elections.

And, no matter how they may try to spin it, the Palin-Bachmann-Limbaugh-Beck-Pawlenty far-right conservative anschluss of New York's 23rd Congressional District was an absolute failure. Yes, the far-right wingnut "base" attempt to oust a moderate Republican from the race succeeded, but they failed to win a majority of the voters in that heavily Republican and conservative district. Typically, off-year elections are dominated by out-of-power party enthusiasts rather than independents or average voters, so, actually, Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman (a Glenn Beck protege) should have won that House seat. But no, wingnuts: you LOST. And the reason you lost is because you fielded an ideological carpetbagger in a blatant attempt to purge and upstage the moderate Republican candidate. Naturally, wild-eyed fools like Beck and Limbaugh will spin this as an example of what they'll call "RINO treachery" by moderate Republican candidate Dede Scozafava, who, upon being dumped by the far-right Hoffman, publicly endorsed the Democratic challenger Bill Owens, who ended up winning the election. In reality, the only treachery here was by these far, far-right wingnuts, whose views are NOT shared by the majority of the country, having grabbed nearly total control of the Republican Party and pushing moderate candidates out. This should serve as a giant warning to the Republican Party to purge these ultra-conservative fanatics, rather than moderates, from the party if they ever hope to win another national election. For with wingnuts at the helm, the GOP ship will certainly be smashed against the cliff going forward, and that should be a source of huge concern to every Republican!


The Democrats will revel in their New York win, but they should soberly take stock and realize that the victory would never have occurred without a Republican split. This win was NOT a resounding endorsement of their national performance or of President Obama's policies! For one thing, far too many progressive and Democratic voters stayed home. For another, just as Nancy Hanks predicted in her recent post over at The Hankster, the Republicans DID manage to peel off a few independent votes and this does not bode well for the President's or the progressive agenda in 2010. President Obama is not being perceived as a strong, effective, and decisive leader. His efforts at bipartisanship have hurt rather than helped him, for they have borne no fruit. Joblessness is still rising, and hurting people want ACTION---NOW! Many are starting to wonder why huge banks and auto companies got bailouts but the average citizen got very, very little in return. Conservative Republicans, aided by timid "Blue Dog" Democrats' (DINOs) inaction, are gaining some ground by spinning this disastrous Bush-bequeathed economy into "the Obama recession", and they won't let up. People have GOT to start seeing some big results from the Obama agenda, and that means he and his Democrats must begin to push and lead boldly rather than proceeding along with the "Republican Lite" methodology they have been using. That means JOBS programs - NOW - and passing meaningful health care reform WITH A STRONG PUBLIC OPTION - NOW! Democrats must UNITE and boldly enact legislation benefitting average people, as they did from 1933-1968, rather than playing the Republican game of cozying up to big business. And that also means getting a more people-oriented and fiery Senate Majority Leader than that wimpy Harry Reid, too!

This country elected Barack Obama one year ago for bold, decisive CHANGE on behalf of the people. He has managed to save the economy, but it is still very sick and ordinary peoples' lives are still negatively affected. If he wants to get anything major accomplished in this term, and to hold onto good Congressional majorities, he must rekindle his base and implement a progressive, for-the-people agenda and stop pussyfooting around with conservative Republicans!