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Bernie Sanders To Propose New Rule Requiring Fair Prices For Taxpayer-Funded Drugs

Sanders’ bill faces dim prospects of becoming law. The deep-pocketed pharmaceutical industry has cultivated powerful allies in both parties, despite Democrats’ recently released platform taking aim at drug prices. In January, 13 Democrats joined 39 Republicans to vote down a bill designed to lower prescription drug prices. Among them was Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a rising star in the party with potential 2020 presidential ambitions, who said during an NPR interview last month that he put a “pause” on fundraising from drug companies because “it arouses so much criticism.”

The bill seems unlikely to find support in the White House, despite Trump’s campaign trail promises to crack down on drug pricing. Rather than pushing for legislation, the administration is weighing an executive order that would strengthen monopoly rights for pharmaceutical companies overseas, eliminate discounts for low-income hospitals and speed up drug approvals by the Food and Drug Administration, Kaiser Health News reported in June. Bloomberg Gadfly’s health industry columnist described the order as being “more like a pharma wish list than a menu of onerous demands.”

Plus, no president since George H.W. Bush has intervened to lower prices on government-backed drugs.

Still, Sanders’ bill sets the stage for a larger debate over drug pricing, particularly because it targets federal agencies as well as nonprofits funded by federal grants. If such a law were in place, the government would have more power to regulate major new technologies like CRISPR, the gene-engineering technique that, according to reports this month, has been used to edit a human embryo.

“This is a really big deal,” Jamie Love, the director of KEI, told HuffPost on Monday morning. “This means that the public, who pays for the research and development of a number of drugs, vaccines and other medical technologies, will pay lower prices for inventions that they subsidized.”

Bernie Sanders: We need working class to see ‘some Mexican making eight dollars an hour’ isn’t the problem

Senator Bernie Sanders said recently that his current goal is showing the American working class that “their problems are not caused by some Mexican making eight dollars an hour picking strawberries.”

In an interview with New Yorker reporter Benjamin Wallace-Wells published recently, Sanders said that he has encountered a lot of “despair” on his recent travels to rural parts of the US.

Over the last several months, the Vermont senator and one-time presidential candidate has been actively touring traditionally conservative states such as West Virginia and Kentucky, as well as swing states like Ohio, to talk about how the goals of the Democratic Party could help low-income, rural Americans.

“There is a lot of pain. And we’ve got to understand that reality,” Sanders said in the interview. “And then tell these people that their problems are not caused by some Mexican making eight dollars an hour picking strawberries.”

Even though Sanders identifies as Independent, he said he hopes to convince low-income people in rural communities that the values of the Democratic National Committee could help communities dealing with problems like the opioid epidemic and a lack of jobs that pay liveable wages.

Bernie Sanders Says Democrats Still Too Conservative After He Nearly Won the Nomination

Even though the Democratic Party apparently has moved toward the left following the election of President Donald Trump, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has a warning for progressives.

“Do not underestimate the resistance of the Democratic establishment,” Sanders told The New Yorker.

Sanders has returned to classifying as an Independent following his second-place finish in the 2016 Democratic primaries. While he came up short against Hillary Clinton, and his ally Keith Ellison lost the race to lead the Democratic National Committee, many credit Sanders for the Democratic Party’s leftward policy shift

Ideas Sanders has long promoted, such as a $15 minimum wage, a trillion-dollar investment in infrastructure and a nationwide single-payer health care system, are gaining popularity in the party.

One reason Trump was elected was because he saw that the Democratic Party had ignored millions of voters, Sanders told The New Yorker.

“He said, ‘Hey, I hear you. I’m going to do something for you.’ And he lied,” Sanders said.

Democratic rising star Kamala Harris has a “Bernieland” problem

Freshman Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has recently become the subject of much speculation about a potential 2020 presidential run. Several major news outlets have run feature-length profiles of Harris, and top Democratic donors are starting to coalesce around her as their preferred candidate to take on President Donald Trump.

But not everyone on the progressive left is feeling Harris-fever, and if the senator wants to win the Democratic presidential primary in three years, she’ll have to start making inroads with a growing grassroots movement that remains highly skeptical of Harris’s progressive bona fides.

Nomiki Konst, a Bernie Sanders supporter who serves on the Democratic National Committee’s Unity Commission had three words for Democrats interested in Harris as a candidate: “Follow the money.”

“The Democrats will not win until they address income inequality, no matter how they dress up their next candidate,” Konst said. “If that candidate is in bed with Wall Street, you may as well lay a tombstone out for the Democratic Party now. Voters are smart; they can follow the money.”

Konst’s skepticism about Harris’s alleged ties to Wall Street and insufficient commitment to populist economic issues reflect a broader trend among the residents of Bernieland. In a recent New York Times profile of Harris, another high profile Sanders supporter, executive director of National Nurses United RoseAnn DeMoro dismissed Harris’s prospects as a progressive 2020 contender, saying, “She’s not on our radar.”

Sen. Sanders Urges A Medicare-For-All Health Plan

NPR’s Steve Inskeep talks with Sen. Bernie Sanders on his plans to push forward with a bill for a single-payer health insurance system, in the wake of Republican failures to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

Polls: Fieger and Whitmer Tied; Stabenow Leads Kid Rock 50%-42%

Probably a little less laughter about that race now.

Meet the Democrats Running on Single-Payer Health Care

Some progressives see the recent GOP debacle as an opportunity to push bolder policy ahead of the 2018 midterms

What should the Democrats do now? Follow this mustachioed ironworker

Democrats should be, without any lingering reservations, a party of the working class and poor. Congressional candidate Randy Bryce can show them the way

House Judiciary Committee Asks DOJ to Investigate DNC Rigging Primaries

The most recent court hearing on the class action lawsuit filed against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on behalf of Sen. Bernie Sanders supporters occurred in late April 2017 when a federal court judge in South Florida heard arguments from DNC attorneys and Attorney Jared Beck for why the court should move forward on the case. That decision is still pending, but on July 27 Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee wrote a seven page letter to the Department of Justice seeking a special counsel probe into several aspects of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

“We call on you to appoint a second special counsel to investigate a plethora of matters connected to the 2016 election and its aftermath,” the Republicans wrote, citing actions made by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who controversially met with Bill Clinton on an airport tarmac days before FBI Director James Comey gave a public statement on the FBI’s conclusion of their investigation. The committee members are seeking a special counsel similar to that of Robert Mueller, who was appointed to oversee the investigation into Trump’s connection with Russia.

Along with the letter, Republicans listed 14 requests for a special counsel to investigate “inappropriate collusion between the DNC and Clinton Campaign to undermine Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.”

What Anti-Pipeline Warriors Have Learned from Standing Rock

South Louisiana is mostly swamp or bayou, so when Cherri Foytlin wanted to share her disapproval with the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, she literally didn’t have solid ground to stand on. Instead, she and other protest organizers built a floating prayer camp made of rafts.

“Historically, the swamp is where resistance has gathered,” she told me. “Escaped slaves, indigenous communities escaping colonization. The swamp protects us, so of course this is where our camp would be—with the water.”

The proposed pipeline she’s fighting would be a 162-mile extension of an existing pipeline in Texas. If approved, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline would pass through 11 Louisiana parishes. Foytlin, a Diné and Cherokee mother of six, has been a prominent leader in the struggle against it.

Camp L’eau Est La Vie, French for “water is life,” is constantly changing and growing, with new rafts or indigenous art pieces being added on. Foytlin tells me that she and other organizers are intentionally keeping many details about the camp secret—a lesson learned from watching Standing Rock, where outsiders flocked to the anti-pipeline camps after the battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) became a national cause.

The company behind Keystone XL isn’t even sure if there’s a need for the pipeline anymore

Towards the end of March, President Donald Trump, surrounded by Republican lawmakers and TransCanada CEO Russ Girling, announced that his administration had decided to approve a key permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, effectively allowing the stalled project to begin moving forward once again.

“The bottom line: Keystone, finished,” Trump said at the time.

Reality, however, presents a very different picture than Trump’s rhetoric. Last week, TransCanada, the pipeline’s developer, announced that it was still trying to secure customers for the oil that would be carried by the pipeline. And the project still needs approval from a Nebraska regulatory commission, which likely won’t come until late November.

Taken together, those developments suggest that the pipeline — which activists, indigenous communities, and Midwestern landowners have spent nearly a decade fighting — might not be built after all.

Montana Eased Regulations for Keystone XL After Lobbying by TransCanada

As President Trump’s State Department took steps to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, the project’s owner, TransCanada, lobbied on two bills in Montana which will ease the company’s regulatory burden in the state.

Those bills, HB 365 and SB 109, moved along in the state’s legislature with no media coverage despite the state being the first crossed in the pipeline’s proposed journey from Alberta, Canada to Steele City, Nebraska. HB 365, which passed in May, will allow TransCanada to escape civil liability for any potential damages suffered by its contracted land surveyors. Meanwhile, SB 109 would have required environmental reviews for infrastructure projects in Montana to consider impacts beyond state lines, but failed to pass.

TransCanada spent $4,348 on its Montana lobbying efforts for the 2017 session, according to its post-session disclosure form, including $830 wining and dining the 10-member Montana American Indian Caucus. The slated 830,000 barrel-per-day oil pipeline would pass near the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and cross the Missouri River, a water source for 7,000 Assiniboine and Sioux tribe members.

Pipeline builder buying Conestoga farm where opposition is headquartered; protesters vow to continue movement

The owners of the planned Atlantic Sunrise pipeline are buying the 107-acre farm in Conestoga Township that has served as a center for those opposed to the project.

Williams said in a statement to LNP that it was buying the Justin and Susan Cappiello farm on Conestoga Boulevard to allow for a large staging area so that it can drill under the Conestoga River.

Opponents of the pipeline that would go through 37 miles of Lancaster County are accusing Oklahoma-based Williams Partners of going out of its way to quash opposition.

Lancaster Against Pipelines said in a statement that the purchase was a “futile effort to squelch a locally vibrant and nationally recognized movement.

“The sale is a stark example of how much pressure — through unlimited resources, the complicity of regulatory agencies, high-power attorneys, local and federal legislators, and slick advertising — the corporation can bring to bear on private landowners.

“The Stand is not a property. It’s a vibrant grassroots movement.”