Thanks Benny

Yeah Joe I have a problem you corrupt asshole

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/12/13/manchin-blind-trust-enersystems-stock-climate-change/

In Sen. Joe Manchin III’s hilly West Virginia home county, his family’s business has made millions by taking waste coal from long-abandoned mines and selling it to a power plant that emits air pollution at a higher rate than any other plant in the state.

That enterprise could have taken a hit under a key part of President Biden’s climate agenda, a $150 billion plan to push coal plants toward cleaner energy. One lawmaker, though, played a central role in killing that proposal: Manchin, who has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from the family coal company while using his role as a Democratic swing vote in a 50-50 Senate to dictate Biden’s policies.

When pressed about whether he has a conflict of interest, Manchin bristles. “I have been in a blind trust for 20 years. I have no idea what they’re doing,” the senator told reporters in September, referring to his family’s coal firm. “You got a problem?”

But contrary to his public statements, documents filed by the senator show the blind trust is much too small to account for all his reported earnings from the coal company, as of his latest financial disclosure report, which covers 2020 and was filed in May.

Manchin’s latest financial disclosure report says that the West Virginia family coal business that he helped found and run, Enersystems, paid him $492,000 in interest, dividends and other income in 2020, and that his share of the firm is worth between $1 million and $5 million. He signed a sworn statement saying he is aware of these earnings, underscoring that he is not blind to them.

By contrast, Manchin set up a blind trust with $350,000 in cash in 2012. In his latest financial disclosure report, the senator reported that the Joseph Manchin III Qualified Blind Trust earned no more than $15,000 last year and is worth between $500,000 and $1 million. By design, it is not possible to know precisely what’s in the blind trust. But the financial disclosure records show that it doesn’t include all of Manchin’s income from Enersystems.

If Manchin’s coal interests are not in a blind trust, ethics experts said, it calls into question the impartiality of a senator who in October forced Biden to drop the plan in his Build Back Better bill to phase out the same kinds of coal plants that are key to his family company’s profitability.

The senator’s effort to dismiss questions about his coal interests by declaring he has a blind trust is “misleading and at worst it’s just not true,” said Don Fox, a former general counsel and acting director of the Office of Government Ethics in the Obama administration, who examined Manchin’s financial records at The Washington Post’s request. He cited the vast difference between Manchin’s reported income from the trust and his family’s coal business.

“The question I would ask him would be, when he says it’s in a blind trust, ‘Well, your public financial disclosure report that you sign and swear is true does not have Enersystems in the blind trust,’ ” Fox said. “And if the blind trust is truly blind, how do you know what’s in it?”

Her opponent, Molly Gray, hasn’t endorsed the GND or M4A.

https://vtdigger.org/2021/12/13/becca-balint-leader-of-the-vermont-senate-joins-race-for-u-s-house/

Becca Balint, the president pro tempore of the Vermont Senate, is running for the state’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, she announced Monday morning.

“I’m running because I believe that, even with the challenges of today, we cannot back away from fighting for each other,” the Windham County Democrat said in a written statement. “We have to deliver on some big promises for Vermont working families, and that is going to take courage and kindness.”

Balint joins Lt. Gov. Molly Gray in the Democratic primary to succeed U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., who is vacating his House seat to run for the U.S. Senate. No Republicans have entered the race.

Balint, 53, is the first openly gay woman elected to the Vermont Senate and the first woman to serve as its president. The former middle school teacher and stay-at-home mother won her first political contest in a race for her southeastern Vermont Senate seat in 2014.

In a campaign video released Monday morning, Balint leans into her identity — recounting the prejudice she and Wohl faced when they first moved to Vermont and describing the impact of antisemitism on her family.

“I know what can happen when we turn away from each other,” Balint says in the video. “My grandfather was murdered on a death march in the Holocaust. I grew up with the knowledge that people can be led astray when they’re scared.”

Later in the video, Balint says that if elected to Congress she would advocate for Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, paid family and medical leave, racial justice and housing justice.

If we actually cared about the climate crisis threatening all life on the planet, this would be considered an enormous scandal. https://t.co/3B7w64dZjJ

— David Sirota (@davidsirota) December 13, 2021

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/12/10/probe-shows-big-pharma-manipulated-patent-system-and-raised-prices-abandon

Bolstering calls for the U.S. Senate to pass the Build Back Better bill with drug pricing reforms, a House panel on Friday released a report detailing how Big Pharma has not only “raised prices with abandon,” but also “manipulated the patent system” to suppress competition.

The final staff report is the culmination of a nearly three-year investigation by the Committee on Oversight and Reform launched under the late Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), who died in 2019. He was succeeded as the panel’s chair by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.).

“The committee has obtained more than 1.5 million pages of internal company documents, held five hearings, and released eight interim staff reports,” Maloney noted in a letter at the beginning of the report. “The investigation has provided a rare glimpse into the decision-making of many of the world’s most profitable drug companies.”

Specifically, as a committee statement detailed, the probe revealed:

Drug companies aggressively raise prices to meet revenue targets, and executive compensation structures create incentives to raise prices;
Drug companies target the U.S. market for higher prices and use the Medicare program to boost revenue;
Drug companies use strategies to suppress competition and maintain monopoly pricing;
Drug companies use patient assistance programs as a public relations tool to boost sales; and
Research and manufacturing costs do not justify price increases.

Horrifying details are emerging about the tornado disaster at Amazon's warehouse in Illinois, where at least 6 workers were killed on the job.

Before he died, Larry Virden reportedly texted his girlfriend: "Amazon won’t let us leave." He leaves behind four children. pic.twitter.com/3ZRLik9VIs

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) December 13, 2021