"It's time we reevaluate the standards for approving these mergers. It's time we pass legislation to lower drug prices. And it's time we rethink the structure of leadership at big pharmaceutical companies."
Rep. Katie Porter on Friday published a damning report revealing the devastating effects of Big Pharma mergers and acquisitions on U.S. healthcare, and recommending steps Congress should take to enact “comprehensive, urgent reform” of an integral part of a broken healthcare system. The report, entitled Killer Profits: How Big Pharma Takeovers Destroy Innovation and Harm Patients, begins by noting that “in just 10 years, the number of large, international pharmaceutical companies decreased six-fold, from 60 to only 10.” Continue reading →
"Wall Street and stock market are metaphors for a society rotting from self-indulgence, greed, widening inequality, and financial entrepreneurship that builds nothing, improves nothing, creates nothing, and solves nothing."
“Anyway, tax the rich,” concluded Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her brief Twitter assessment of the ongoing saga. Continue reading →
Mainly as the result of the Trump administration’s U.S.-centric view of the COVID-19 pandemic, the American media has largely ignored the dire effects the disease has had in other countries, particularly developing nations in Africa and Asia. WMR has received a first-hand report of the virus taking the lives of a number of political leaders in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and other countries. South Africa’s dynamic Minister of the Presidency, Jackson Mthembu was the latest to fall victim to the virus. Mthembu was a stalwart of the governing African National Congress (ANC) who began fighting against the apartheid regime in the 1970s. Mthembu became ill from the virus on January 11 and he died on January 21, ten days later. A more dangerous mutation of COVID-19 has been discovered in South Africa. However, it is not known if that was what took Mthembu’s life. Continue reading →
"Section 230 is one of the most important laws protecting freedom of expression and human rights in the digital age."
A coalition of internet defenders on Wednesday cautioned lawmakers against responding to this month’s attack on the U.S. Capitol by making “uncareful changes” to section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that could “profoundly alter the state of digital free speech and human rights.” Continue reading →
Unable to secure a profit in immunizing poorer nations, Western multinationals, including Oxford’s private partner AstraZeneca, have prioritized those who can pay the most.
Europe is reeling from the shock news that biotech giant AstraZeneca will not be delivering anything like the number of vaccines it promised. The company informed European Union officials that they will only be supplying 31 million doses to 27 E.U. countries, rather than the 80 million they had promised would arrive by the end of March. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conti predicted that the news would reap “enormous damage” on the continent that has already sustained over 32 million confirmed cases and 703,000 deaths due to COVID-19. Continue reading →
"Trump confessed he was wrecking USPS to rig the election. His toady Postmaster General DeJoy carried out that arson. It's time to clean house."
Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. of New Jersey on Monday urged President Joe Biden to terminate all six sitting members of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors for their “silence and complicity” in the face of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and former President Donald Trump’s full-scale assault on the beloved government mail agency. Continue reading →
Running decrepit power plants way beyond their design capability is setting the U.S. up for a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima.
Professor Karl Grossman is a renowned expert critic of the United States’ nuclear power industry. In the following interview with Strategic Culture Foundation, he highlights concern over the move currently being proposed by the regulatory authorities to extend the operating licenses of already aging nuclear reactors across the U.S. Power stations that were originally designed to have a 40-year operating lifespan are now being slated to run for up to 100 years. The move, says Grossman, is being pushed by the nuclear industry lobby as a way to salvage the increasingly unviable economics of nuclear power. There is also, he notes, a “revolving door” relationship between private nuclear energy companies and the government authorities who are supposed to regulate the industry. That means questions of public safety are being ignored in the furtherance of profits. Running decrepit power plants way beyond their design capability is setting the United States up for a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl or Fukushima, warns Grossman. Continue reading →
"The only thing that is acceptable at the Social Security Administration is a new commissioner and a new deputy commissioner who believe in the system, the movement won't accept anything less."
After President Joe Biden kicked off his White House tenure Wednesday by sacking several corrupt and incompetent holdovers from the Trump administration—including labor board attorney Peter Robb and CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger—progressives are urging the newly inaugurated president to keep the firing spree going by terminating his predecessor’s right-wing appointees at the Social Security Administration. Continue reading →
These proposed laws are "aimed at police brutality protests, not right-wing insurrection."
Progressives are sounding the alarm that a handful of Republican lawmakers are exploiting the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 by an insurrectionist pro-Trump mob to push for anti-protest bills that critics say do not aim to stem the tide of right-wing extremism but instead criminalize dissent by those seeking social change and justice. Continue reading →
On January 11, in his final days before leaving office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added one parting blow to the series of bludgeons his administration has inflicted on Cuba for four years: putting the island on the list of “state sponsors of terror” that includes only Iran, North Korea and Syria. The designation drew swift condemnation from policymakers and humanitarian groups as a decision widely characterized as “politically motivated.” It comes six years after the Obama administration had removed Cuba from the same list as part of his policy of rapprochement. Continue reading →
As the US ruling elites have fully succumbed to Israel’s political discourse on Palestine, the Israeli government of right-wing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, may feel that it, alone, is capable of determining the future of the Palestinian people. Continue reading →
"Their complicity endangers America, erodes our democracy, and it must end."
A Republican congressman from West Virginia on Monday blocked a resolution calling on Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove President Donald Trump from office, a move that came as Democratic lawmakers unveiled articles of impeachment against the president that are expected to receive a vote later this week. Continue reading →
"If another head of state came in and ordered an attack on the United States Congress, would we say that that should not be prosecuted?" the New York Democrat said Sunday.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday stressed a need for President Donald Trump’s removal from office, saying that failing to hold him accountable for Wednesday’s violent attack on the Capitol could ensure “it will happen again.” Continue reading →
"He shouldn't just be impeached or removed from office. He should be in jail."
Demands that President Donald Trump be fully held to account for inciting the fascist mob that rampaged through the U.S. Capitol building proliferated Wednesday as all hell broke loose in Washington, D.C., with members of Congress and journalists forced to seek shelter as the lame-duck incumbent’s supporters shattered windows and clashed with law enforcement. Continue reading →
On December 21, the United States Congress passed the COVID-19 Relief Package, as part of a larger $2.3 trillion bill meant to cover spending for the rest of the fiscal year. As usual, US representatives allocated a massive sum of money for Israel. Continue reading →
"PGE throwing another lawsuit at us to try to bring us to heel, when our community has overwhelmingly said 'hell no' multiple times."
In a clear signal of how the fossil fuel industry feels about efforts to enact Rights of Nature protections that safeguard communities and the environment from the impacts of coal, gas, and oil development, an energy company has—yet again—filed a federal lawsuit challenging a local law in Grant Township, Pennsylvania Continue reading →
Civil asset forfeiture laws, which allow police to seize property without trial, are frequently justified as tools to seize millions from kingpins. A new study reveals the median amount taken is as low as $369 in some states.
In 2015, New Mexico lawmakers unanimously passed a bill to all but end civil asset forfeiture, the process that lets police keep cash or property they seize, even if they never charge the owner with a crime, so long as they suspect that it’s linked to criminal activity. High-profile lawsuits and press attention had prompted some states to reexamine their forfeiture laws. Continue reading →
"Major tax cuts for the rich since the 1980s have increased income inequality, with all the problems that brings, without any offsetting gains in economic performance."
Neoliberal gospel says that cutting taxes on the wealthy will eventually benefit everyone by boosting economic growth and reducing unemployment, but a new analysis of fiscal policies in 18 countries over the last 50 years reveals that progressive critics of “trickle down” theory have been right all along: supply-side economics fuels inequality, and the real beneficiaries of the right-wing approach to taxation are the super-rich. Continue reading →
"Haul Louis DeJoy in front of a criminal grand jury for his postal sabotage and subversion of our elections," said Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr.
Nearly four months after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez first demanded that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy turn over his daily calendar, the U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday released documents rendered almost completely useless by heavy redactions concealing who DeJoy met with as he worked to implement his destructive overhaul of mail operations. Continue reading →
The modern chicken industry is among the most egregious in the world. Worker abuse, animal abuse, abuse of small farmers, pollution of waterways, contaminated food products and financial wrongdoing regularly appear in the news. Big fines have no effect on an industry in which one company can make as much as $41 billion a year. Yes billion. Continue reading →
Erik Prince, the founder of the discredited former mercenary firm Blackwater USA and brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, has apparently landed a major secret Pentagon contract for mercenary services in Africa. The announcement of the contract was practically simultaneous with Donald Trump’s order to withdraw some 7,000 U.S. military personnel from Somalia. The moves by Trump and the Pentagon, which has seen several Trump loyalists embedded in key positions after Trump’s firing of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and other Pentagon officials on November 9, is yet another monetization of government services by Trump and his grifter supporters prior to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Continue reading →
"Joe Biden needs to undo these cruel regulations—and clean house at SSA—on day one."
Just weeks away from relinquishing power to incoming President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump administration is quietly launching a last-minute assault on Social Security by rushing ahead with a rule that, if implemented, could deny critical benefits to hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities. Continue reading →
The home of Rebekah Jones, a Florida state official who was fired for refusing to manipulate coronavirus data to justify premature re-opening of the economy, was raided Monday by the Florida Department of Law enforcement. Continue reading →
"It's sad that even on his way out, President Trump still can't resist the opportunity to stick it to the government workers."
The largest federal workers union in the United States condemned President Donald Trump on Thursday for throwing his support behind the Senate GOP’s effort to freeze the pay of civilian government employees in 2021, a move that would effectively slash their pay given rising insurance premiums. Continue reading →
During the most severe Main Street economic collapse in US history—with over one-fourth of working-age Americans jobless—additional calamity looms in the coming weeks. Continue reading →
"McConnell is making it pretty clear that if Dems don't win the Georgia Senate races, he will cripple the American economy, hoping it will let the GOP win the midterm."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday began circulating a coronavirus relief proposal whose contents offer so little assistance to the tens of millions of jobless, hungry, and eviction-prone Americans that critics warned the Kentucky Republican is actively working to ensure the U.S. economy remains mired in deep recession as the Biden administration takes charge next month. Continue reading →
“Enough is enough,” an emotional George Sterling of Georgia’s Election Commission declared at a nationally televised press conference Tuesday. Continue reading →
While Donald Trump has continually lambasted the FBI for wiretapping his Trump Tower in New York—legally authorized by court orders as a result of the amount of organized crime activity taking place there—there is evidence that he had at least one condominium outfitted with audio and video bugs during its use by contestants on Trump’s NBC reality show, “The Apprentice.” Moreover, there are fears being expressed from informed quarters that Trump has been blackmailing individuals who have stayed at his Trump International Hotel, located in the Old Post Office building, on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON—A group of 40 Democratic senators has joined the House-led effort to block GOP Oval Office occupant Donald Trump’s return to the long-discredited and corrupt spoils system. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON—Augmented by progressives, notably from the group Our Revolution, thousands of Postal Workers, other unionists, and their supporters turned out from coast to coast on Nov. 17 to campaign against Trump Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s resumed destruction of the U.S. Postal Service. Continue reading →
"I say to the Walton family: Get off welfare," declared Sen. Bernie Sanders in response to the government study he commissioned. "Pay your workers a living wage—at least $15 an hour."
Pinpointing a reality denounced as “morally obscene” by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a new government study shows how some of the nation’s largest and most profitable corporations—including Walmart, McDonald’s, Dollar General, and Amazon—feast upon taxpayer money by paying their employees such low wages that huge numbers of those workers throughout the year are forced to rely on public assistance programs such as Medicaid and food assistance just to keep themselves and their families afloat. Continue reading →
Belgium is furious. On November 6, the Belgian government condemned Israel’s destruction of Belgian-funded homes in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. Understandably, Brussels wants the Israeli government to pay compensation for the unwarranted destruction. The Israeli response was swift: a resounding ‘no.’ Continue reading →
