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Report: Bernie’s Single-Payer ‘Litmus Test’ Worries Dems

Bernie Sanders Tells Big Pharma: Stop Making Americans Pay Twice

While both political parties have denounced the rising cost of prescription drugs, neither Democrats nor Republicans have done much to address the problem. But this summer, a new tool to restrict the rising prices of drugs developed with taxpayer dollars has been introduced by the two U.S. senators who don’t belong to either party.

The mechanism works like this: Drug manufacturers who take federal money to develop drugs must keep their U.S. prices in line with the prices they charge in other economically advanced nations — typically much lower than drug prices in the U.S.

The system would prevent pharmaceutical companies from effectively double-charging U.S. consumers by using their tax money for research and then charging them some of the steepest prices in the world at the pharmacy. Pharmaceutical companies, who pour millions of dollars into both the Democratic and Republican parties, are against the idea, which is perhaps why the fix is being pushed by Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, the only independents in congress.

The U.S. has the highest level of per capita pharmaceutical spending of any nation on Earth, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). And while Americans spend more than any other country to buy their drugs, they also spend more than any other country to develop those same drugs.

Inside Bernie Sanders’s campaign to save Obamacare

On three separate occasions this July, staffers for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) began preparing for the rollout of his new single-payer health care bill.

But every time they started to do so, Senate Republicans would improbably revive their push to repeal Obamacare — and Sanders’s team would postpone the launch of their “Medicare-for-all” campaign, according to aides to the Vermont senator.

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This was something of a relief to some Democrats. Just last year, the party warily eyed Sanders as a potential liability as much as a potential ally. After all, he has repeatedly insisted that Obamacare was, at best, a way station on the road to single-payer.

“Obamacare was a small victory for the uninsured, but it is time to take the fight against inadequate coverage even further,” he said.

After the election, some feared the Vermont independent would continue to torch Obamacare’s inadequacies, while turning his passionate followers against the Democratic Party.

But at least during the Obamacare repeal fight in Congress, Sanders was a team player. He brought crowds to dozens of rallies with Senate Democrats who had once opposed him. He shut a Republican attempt to expose Democrats’ divisions, despite the interest of some of his team. And, perhaps most importantly, he marshaled his resources and newfound star power in defense of Democrats’ top priority: showing what it might look like for his movement to be incorporated into the party apparatus, rather than having it try to knock down its gates.

I don’t even want to link to this crap but… I guess I will

Get Off Kamala Harris’s Back

Kamala Harris doesn’t have a Bernie Sanders problem. The so-called “Sanders Left” has a black-woman problem. In fact, the entire left has a black-woman problem. On May 25, a group of black women wrote an open letter to DNC Chairman Tom Perez requesting that he meet with black women politicians and policy makers. The letter noted that the 115th Congress has “20 Black women—the largest number in history” and reminded Perez that in 2008 and 2012, black women were the party’s most loyal voting bloc. The DNC refused to even give black women an official response to the letter. I say this, because I want to be clear that the DNC is no friend to black women. However, if 2016 is any indicator, the vast majority of black women rejected the Sanders solution as a model for the kind of left politics that meets their needs.

Sanders’s voters think that black women who care about establishment politics lack vision. They don’t get the psychology of black women’s party loyalty. Black feminist theorists beginning with Professor Stanlie James have long talked about what they call the “visionary pragmatism” of black women. They point to the fact that black women typically believe in a brighter future but that they also believe in keeping the lights on and in maintaining a solid foundation upon which to build the future they want to see. You can have a left political vision and a pragmatic approach in the voting booth. Unfortunately demagogues on the left insist that this is a lack of vision.

The Democrats Are a Lost Cause, Period

There they go again.

Hillary Clinton was a two-time loser. Weirdly, her people are still in charge of the Democratic Party. Clintonista militant moderates haven’t learned a thing from Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump — so they’re trying to sell Democratic voters on more of the same.

Remember what happened when Clinton ran on the whole never mind your crappy low wage job, vote for me because first woman president bit? Now we’re supposed to get excited about center-right California Sen. Kamala Harris because she ticks off two boxes on the identity politics hit parade.

Remember the ugly optics when Bill and Hillary Clinton took their excellent fundraising adventure to the Hamptons? Kamala Harris 2020 is already doing the same thing.

Remember how it well worked out when Clinton snubbed Sanders and insulted his progressive supporters, then ran a tack-to-the-right general-election campaign that targeted Republicans who were never going to vote for her? Here comes Harris with rhetoric that makes her sound like a Rand Paul Republican: “I agree we must be talking about wasteful spending in our country … we must be talking about tax reform.” Also lots o’ tasty “tough on crime.”

The DNC is still partying like it’s 1999: Third Way/DLC/center-right triangulation is king.

Some Democrats won’t feel the burn for Kamala Harris, but should it matter?

Many of the Bernie Sanders faithful are not happy with Harris’ promotion by the party.

They’ve given several reasons for their dissatisfaction. Some say she is corporate and will be beholden to Wall Street.

Others point to her work as a prosecutor, where she allegedly failed to prosecute banks despite evidence of misconduct. Harris also is said to have “defended convictions of prosecutors who lied under oath.”

She also fought to deny a transgender woman gender reassignment for a transgender California prison inmate.

Some including Kamala Harris herself have warned that searching for ideological purity or the perfect candidate will hurt not only the party but the country. They are correct.

However, what will hurt the party and country even more is making the far left feel disenfranchised. One reason the so-called “Bernie Bros” felt angry with Clinton was that it appeared to be coronation. They are a significant group on the left, yet a few donors make the decision about the future of the party.

In addition, mainline party members accuse them of sexism and racism without a solid basis for the allegation. Their dislike for Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz certainly was not based on race, as one would be hard pressed to find anyone whiter than those two

Attorneys for landowners dominate questioning in first 8 hours of Keystone XL hearing

The latest leg of the Keystone XL oil pipeline’s regulatory slog kicked off in laborious fashion Monday.

Attorneys for landowners who are trying to keep the pipeline from running under their fields quizzed representatives of pipeline builder TransCanada for about eight hours in a hearing before the Nebraska Public Service Commission at the Cornhusker Marriott Hotel.

Most of their questions focused on how TransCanada plans to avoid damaging land and other natural resources if it’s allowed to build the pipeline, as well as what the company would do with the Keystone XL once it becomes unusable.

“Can you think of anything more important to a future generation of Nebraskans than this question: Do we have to clean up TransCanada’s abandoned pipeline?” asked David Domina of Omaha, an attorney for the landowners.

Tony Palmer, president of a TransCanada subsidiary that would oversee management of the pipeline if it’s built, said the company won’t commit to removing the Keystone XL at the end of its lifetime, nor will the company agree to set aside money in advance in case removal is required.

Keystone XL’s Path Up for Grabs as Nebraska Commission Weighs In

Nebraska panel to assess future path during five-day hearing

The future of TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline could hinge on whether a Nebraska commission believes the project is in the public’s interest or a private land grab as property owners claim.

More than 90 percent of TransCanada’s preferred 270 mile route through the state would cut across privately owned land, as would an alternate route, company project manager Paul Fuhrer testified Monday during the first day of a hearing in Lincoln, Nebraska.

To gain approval for one of its proposed paths, Keystone lawyers will need to convince the Public Service Commission, made up of four Republicans and one Democrat, and overcome vehement opposition from dozens of landowners, environmental conservation groups and Native American tribes.

The elected commission, created under the state’s constitution, began hearing testimony in what’s scheduled to be a week-long hearing. Much of Monday’s hearing was dominated by testimony from company executives on the pipeline’s maintenance details, including responsibility for cleanup, restoration and removal once the conduit reaches its life expectancy.