@roger,
I'll venture to put a ditto to that.
He's worth 41B, trying to keep Bernie out of office. Says he'll spend 1B on it.
I can't help but to laugh. That in itself may energize more Bernie supporters to the polls. Every time some unfair **** like this happens, we send money.
This seems desperate.
@Lash,
Lash wrote:
He's worth 41B, trying to keep Bernie out of office. Says he'll spend 1B on it.
That's it? I thought superpacs spent more than that these days. 10 should get him into the white house. Trump can't match that.
From Lash's link.
It is an amazing story. Everyone in a position to block Sanders’ campaign did everything they could to sabotage him.
Knowing that coverage is the essential oxygen of politics, the media mostly ignored him. By one measure, corporate media gave Trump 23 times more coverage than Sanders! On the few occasions when they spilled a little ink on Bernie, it was to insult him and his socialist politics.
Of Rotten Apples and Rotten Systems
MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2015
Martin Shkreli, the former hedge-fund manager turned pharmaceutical CEO who was arrested last week, has been described as a sociopath and worse.
In reality, he’s a brasher and larger version of what others in finance and corporate suites do all the time.
Federal prosecutors are charging him with conning wealthy investors.
Lying to investors is illegal, of course, but it’s perfectly normal to use hype to lure rich investors into hedge funds. And the line between the two isn’t always distinct.
Hedge funds are lightly regulated on the assumption that investors are sophisticated and can take care of themselves.
Perhaps prosecutors went after Shkreli because they couldn’t nail him for his escapades as a pharmaceutical executive, which were completely legal – although vile.
Shkreli took over a company with the rights to a 62-year-old drug used to treat toxoplasmosis, a devastating parasitic infection that can cause brain damage in babies and people with AIDS. He then promptly raised its price from $13.50 to $750 a pill.
When the media and politicians went after him, Shkreli was defiant, saying “our shareholders expect us to make as much as money as possible.” He said he wished he had raised the price even higher.
That was too much even for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Big Pharma’s trade group, which complained indignantly that Shkreli’s company was just an investment vehicle “masquerading” as a pharmaceutical company.
Maybe Big Pharma doesn’t want to admit most pharmaceutical companies have become investment vehicles. If they didn’t deliver for their investors they’d be taken over by “activist” investors and private-equity partners who would.
The hypocrisy is stunning. Just three years ago, Forbes Magazine praised Shkreli as one of its “30 under 30 in Finance” who was “battling billionaires and entrenched drug industry executives.”
Last month, Shkreli got control of a company with rights to a cheap drug used for decades to treat Chagas’ disease in Latin America. His aim was to get the drug approved in the United States and charge tens of thousands of dollars for a course of treatment.
Investors who backed Shkreli in this venture did well. The company’s share price initially shot up from under $2 to more than $40.
While other pharmaceutical companies don’t raise their drug prices fiftyfold in one fell swoop, as did Shkreli, they would if they thought it would lead to fat profits.
Most have been increasing their prices more than 10 percent a year – still far faster than inflation – on drugs used on common diseases like cancer, high cholesterol, and diabetes.
This has imposed a far bigger burden on health spending than Shkreli’s escapades, making it much harder for Americans to pay for drugs they need. Even if they’re insured, most people are paying out big sums in co-payments and deductibles.
Not to mention the impact on private insurers, Medicare, state Medicaid, prisons and the Veterans Health Administration.
And the prices of new drugs are sky-high. Pfizer’s new one to treat advanced breast cancer costs $9,850 a month.
According to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, that price isn’t based on manufacturing or research costs.
Instead, Pfizer set the price as high as possible without pushing doctors and insurers toward alternative drugs.
But don’t all profit-maximizing firms set prices as high as they can without pushing customers toward alternatives?
Unlike most other countries, the United States doesn’t control drug prices. It leaves pricing up to the market.
Which enables drug companies to charge as much as the market will bear.
So what, exactly, did Martin Shkreli do wrong, by the standards of today’s capitalism?
He played the same game many others are playing on Wall Street and in corporate suites. He was just more audacious about it.
It’s easy to go after bad guys, much harder to go after bad systems.
Hedge fund managers, for example, make big gains from trading on insider information. That robs small investors who aren’t privy to the information.
But it’s not illegal unless a trader knows the leaker was compensated – a looser standard than in any other advanced country.
Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry is making a fortune off average Americans, who are paying more for the drugs they need than the citizens of any other advanced country.
That’s largely because Big Pharma has wielded its political influence to avoid cost controls, to ban Medicare from using its bargaining clout to negotiate lower prices, and to allow drug companies to pay the makers of generic drugs to delay their cheaper versions.
Shkreli may be a rotten apple. But hedge funds and the pharmaceutical industry are two rotten systems that are costing Americans a bundle.
Robert Reich
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-iowa-win-within-sight-sanders-grows-more-combative-toward-clinton/2016/01/24/5f8610d0-c2c1-11e5-a4aa-f25866ba0dc6_story.html
Over the course of The Post interview, Sanders said Clinton was running a “desperate” campaign incapable of generating the kind of excitement he has. He raised questions about her motives and character. He said he expects Clinton and her campaign to “throw the kitchen sink” at him in the coming week in what he described as a craven attempt to avoid an embarrassing loss in Iowa.
[Sanders says Clinton’s attacks remind him of what Obama got in 2008]
Sanders questioned Clinton’s association with David Brock, the head of the pro-Clinton super PAC Correct the Record, whom Sanders called a “hit man.”
Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders listen as he speaks at a town hall campaign event at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, on Sunday. (Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters)
In recent media interviews, Brock has questioned Sanders’s commitment to African Americans and derisively labeled the senator, who self-identifies as a democratic socialist, as “a socialist.” Brock also reportedly planned to make in an issue of the 74-year-old Sanders’s fitness for office — and demand that he release his health records. He begged off after Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta tweeted at Brock to “chill out.”
“As somebody who respects Secretary Clinton, its saddens me that she would go to a professional political hit man,” Sanders told The Post. He recalled Brock’s efforts 25 years ago as a conservative journalist to “destroy” Anita Hill, after she accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment.
I thought Donna Brazile was a big Clinton supporter. I just saw her introduced as such and she quickly stopped the journalist and said, "Nooo," wagging her finger.
My jaw dropped. Why didn't the guy follow it up!? If anyone sees or reads when and why Brazile dropped HRC, I'd love to know.
@Lash,
If so (a Dona Brazile defection) that's significant on several counts.
@edgarblythe,
Edgar, David Brock was first the darling of conservatives when he did his hatchet job on Hillary. He became disillusioned and I've forgotten why exactly, then he wrote "Blinded by the Right" in which he apologizes for all of his sloppy and dishonest reporting. Unless there are two Brocks and I'm confusing them.
@georgeob1,
I might have missed something. The commentator said, when redirecting, "You're not officially supporting Hillary Clinton..." In other words, she wants to hide her bias...like the rest of them. Tell me what you think.
https://youtu.be/nPbG4y4B3qE
@Lash,
I watched the clip. As a minimum Dona definitely resisted being labelled as a daclared Clinton supporter. Her motived for that unambiguous act are not entirely clear, but the significance you found is indeed a possibility. She has in the not very distand past been a declared Hillary supporter.
@glitterbag,
Same guy. He was a conservative doing a hatchet job on Anita Hill and now he is a Hillary hatchet man.
@Lash,
me too.
I'm still in line to vote for her if she is It (who I don't much like) for reasons expressed repeatedly re the seriousness of this election year, but remain interested in information. I'm obviously not completely against her and may swing more for her than I am now.
