Stephan: Don't think for a moment that the pharmaceutical corporations who are making the vaccines aren't in it for the money, or that even when they are caught killing people that they don't have a tax grift that takes at least some of the corporate pain away. It is a trend that has been going on for decades. The American tax codes are totally crafted to favor the rich, individuals, and corporations alike. This report tells a particularly nasty little story that makes this point.
“While tens of millions of Americans are experiencing extreme economic hardship and dealing with intermittent and often inadequate governmental support for unemployment, food, housing, and small business continuity,” said Robert Weissman of Public Citizen on February 12, 2021, “Johnson & Johnson, McKesson, Cardinal Health, and Amerisource-Bergen are laughing all the way to bank.” Credit: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty
Four pharmaceutical corporations that agreed to pay a combined $26 billion to settle lawsuits resulting from a deadly opioid crisis they helped create reportedly plan to recoup a portion of those costs by deducting roughly $4.6 billion of the payouts from their taxes—sparking intense condemnation.
Big Pharma is attempting to make the public cover some of the fines related to lawsuits filed by dozens of state and local governments highlighting the culpability of opioid manufacturers and distributors in the deaths of an estimated 70,000 people per year.
As Public Citizen president Robert Weissman put it in a statement released Friday, “The drug companies are settling with taxpayers (local government entities) and then demanding that taxpayers pay part of the cost (via a federal tax subsidy).”
Matt Spetalnick, Trevor Hunnicutt, Phil Stewart, - Reuters
Stephan: More good news from the Biden Administration. The Guantanamo Bay torture and detention facility is, and always has been, a vile stain on America's reputation. If you don't know why do some homework: https://www.google.com/search?q=Guantanamo+bay+and+torture&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS747US748&oq=Guantanamo+bay+and+torture&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l9.17656j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Obama tried to close it but could not, but Biden has taken up this battle and is dedicated, as he says, to closing this abomination.
I am so glad to see these wellbeing-oriented trends enter come into a new vitality.
The gate to the infamous GuantanamoCredit: Reuters
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Joe Biden’s aides have launched a formal review of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, reviving the Obama-era goal of closing the controversial facility with the aim of doing so before he leaves office, the White House said on Friday.
Aides involved in internal discussions are considering an executive action to be signed by Biden in coming weeks or months, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, signaling a new effort to remove what human rights advocates have called a stain on America’s global image.
Asked whether Biden would shut the high-security prison located at the Guantanamo Naval Station by the time his presidency ends, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters: “That certainly is our goal and our intention.”
But such an initiative is unlikely to bring down the curtain anytime soon on the offshore facility, due largely to the steep political and legal obstacles that also frustrated efforts by his ex-boss, former President Barack Obama, to close it.
Stephan: This global pandemic in its U.S. manifestation has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children and, as this report in the Lancet spells out, 40% of those deaths happened because of the utter incompetence of the Trump administration. If this is not a form of mass murder I don't know what is.
The British medical journal the Lancet, on Wednesday, published a damning assessment of Donald Trump’s presidency and its impact on Americans’ health, concluding that 40 percent of the nearly 500,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. over the past year were avoidable. The journal came to the conclusion by comparing the U.S. health outcomes on the coronavirus—the country leads the world in COVID deaths and confirmed cases with more than 27 million—with the weighted average of other G-7 nations. So it’s not a wildly abstract conclusion to draw: the U.S. could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives if it had just performed similarly to its economic peers.
The report assailed Trump for his response to the pandemic, but emphasized that the disastrous response to the virus’s spread was the result of years of destructive public policy decisions on health that extended well beyond the Trump years. From the Lancet:
Many of the cases and deaths were avoidable. Instead of galvanizing the U.S. populace to fight the pandemic, President Trump publicly dismissed its threat (despite privately acknowledging it), discouraged action as infection spread, […]
Stephan: More good news and competence from the Biden administration. As this report describes because of the Trump administration's adherence to petroleum, and its utter incompetence, we have fallen behind the rest of the developed world in the transition out of the carbon era. Now we have a president and an administration that understands the importance of catching up.
Robots work on Model X cars in the Tesla factory in Fremont, Calif., in 2018. Credit: Mason Trinca/The Washington Post
As the Biden administration promises to jump-start the clean-energy economy, it faces an uphill climb: The United States has fallen behind Asia and Europe in the race to produce the central technology — the high-tech batteries that power electric cars and store solar and wind energy.
China dominates battery production today, with 93 “gigafactories” that manufacture lithium-ion battery cells, vs. only four in the United States, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a prominent data provider. If current trends continue, China is projected to have 140 gigafactories by 2030, while Europe will have 17 and the United States, just 10.
That would leave the United States dependent on China and other trading partners for much of its battery supply, a risky proposition not just for the auto industry but for the military, which is planning to electrify more of its vehicles and gear. It would also mean missing out on much of the jobs boom the sector […]
Stephan: The instance described in this report, as in this charade of an impeachment trial, both make clear the moral and ethical shabbiness of Republican lawmakers. Our two-party system is in peril, and the election of 2022 becomes ever more important.
President Joe Biden signed a January 27, 2021 executive order temporarily pausing new oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands and waters. Credit: Citizens of the Planet/Education Images/Universal Images Group /Getty
Dozens of Republican lawmakers who oppose President Joe Biden’s executive order temporarily halting new oil and gas leasing on federal lands have taken tens of millions of dollars in career campaign contributions from fossil fuel, energy, and natural resources industry interests, a report published Wednesday revealed.
“Oil and gas CEOs and their political allies on Capitol Hill are doing whatever they can to prop up a system that allows them to exploit public lands at low costs and boost their profits.” —Alan Zibel, Public Citizen
The Public Citizen report—entitled Big Oil’s Capitol Hill Allies (pdf)—examines fossil fuel industry and other polluters’ campaign contributions to the 29 GOP lawmakers from the 70-member Congressional Western Caucus who issued a January 27 statement denouncing an order signed the previous day by Biden pausing new oil and natural gas leases on public lands and in offshore waters pending further review.
While climate campaigners and environmental activists praised Biden—and also […]
