Big Pharma Breaks Lobbying Spending Records To Fight Drug Pricing Initiatives. They’ve already got Carper and Coons in their pockets–although maybe they can rustle up some spare change to further fatten their campaign coffers. Remember, kids, not ‘centrists’, corporatocrats.
Groundhog Day Headline Du Jour: ‘House Democrats Near Vote On Newly-Retooled $1.75 Trillion Spending Plan’. Musical interlude:
NRA Allegedly Illegally Funneled Money To Key Rethugs. Using shell companies. Wonder how many of them are incorporated in Delaware…:
“Over the past seven years, the National Rifle Association has engaged in an ongoing scheme to evade campaign finance regulations by using a series of shell corporations to illegally but surreptitiously coordinate advertising with at least seven candidates for federal office,” the complaint reads.
“Through this scheme, two NRA affiliates made up to $35 million in illegal, excessive, and unreported campaign contributions across the 2014, 2016 and 2018 elections, including up to $25 million to the Trump campaign in 2016,” the lawsuit alleges. “These coordinated contributions violate the Federal Election Campaign’s Act’s (‘FECA’) contribution limits, corporate contribution ban, and disclosure requirements.”
Lawmakers named in the suit who are accused of receiving campaign money from the gun group’s alleged scheme are Republicans Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.), as well as Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) and former Sen. Cory Gardner (R- Colo.).
The Case For Crypto. I don’t understand it, too old to consider it. But this article makes an effective case for it:
All this looks absurd and unprecedented—and while the methods are new, the madness is not. For the past few decades, the wealth barons have played an equally ridiculous game. Robinhood didn’t invent options trading. Putting money into cryptomarkets isn’t the first time people could invest in early stage technologies before they were publicly listed on stock exchanges. Venture capitalists and hedge fund managers do all this professionally. Now, everyone else is finally (sort of) just catching up with them. The American Dream is not a home with a white picket fence—it’s a green ticker symbol that only goes up.
The problem is most of us do not own shit. The top 10 percent of Americans in wealth control 89 percent of Wall Street’s value. White people own 79 percent of all wealth. Homes—because of America’s history of racist redlining, a failed response to the 2009 subprime mortgage crisis that disproportionately screwed over Black-Americans and other groups of color out of housing markets—are disproportionately owned by the white wealthy. A few people have a lot.
The moral question upon seeing the gap between owners and buyers, between the poor and ultra-rich, between capitalists and workers, is how do we end it? Yet in an economy where most people work long hours, are struggling to get by, and have deeply internalized the status quo, that question becomes: How do I get in?
That’s how a million-dollar jpeg of a digital rock turns out to make sense.
Richest 1% Are Also Carbon Hogs:
The carbon dioxide emissions of the richest 1% of humanity are on track to be 30 times greater than what is compatible with keeping global heating below 1.5C, new research warns, as scientists urge governments to “constrain luxury carbon consumption” of private jets, megayachts and space travel.
The richest 1% – which is a population smaller than Germany – are on track to be releasing 70 tonnes of CO2 per person a year if current consumption continues, according to the study. In total they will account for 16% of total emissions by 2030, up from 13% of emissions in 1990. Meanwhile, the poorest 50% will be releasing an average of one tonne of CO2 annually.
Good luck getting them to change.
What do you want to talk about?