April 1, 2017

Tom Price Intervened on Rule That Would Hurt Drug Profits, the Same Day He Acquired Drug Stock

Source: propublica.org

On the same day the stockbroker for then-Georgia Congressman Tom Price bought him up to $90,000 of stock in six pharmaceutical companies last year, Price arranged to call a top U.S. health official, seeking to scuttle a controversial rule that could have hurt the firms’ profits and driven down their share prices, records obtained by ProPublica show.

Stock trades made by Price while he served in Congress came under scrutiny at his confirmation hearings to become President Trump’s secretary of health and human services. The lawmaker, a physician, traded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in health-related companies while he voted on and sponsored legislation affecting the industry, but Price has said his broker acted on his behalf without his involvement or knowledge. ProPublica previously reported that his trading is said to have been under investigation by federal prosecutors.

On March 17, 2016, Price’s broker purchased shares worth between $1,000 and $15,000 each in Eli Lilly, Amgen, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, McKesson, Pfizer and Biogen. Previous reports have noted that, a month later, Price was among lawmakers from both parties who signed onto a bill that would have blocked a rule proposed by the Obama administration, which was intended to remove the incentive for doctors to prescribe expensive drugs that don’t necessarily improve patient outcomes.

What hasn’t been previously known is Price’s personal appeal to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services about the rule, called the Medicare Part B Drug Payment Model. The same day as the stock trade, Price’s legislative aide, Carla DiBlasio, emailed health officials to follow up on a request she had made to set up a call with Patrick Conway, the agency’s chief medical officer. In her earlier emails, DiBlasio said the call would focus on payments for joint replacement procedures. But that day, she mentioned a new issue.

Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/tom-price-intervened-rule-hurt-drug-profits-same-day-acquired-drug-stock

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While in Congress, HHS Secretary Tom Price acted to help kill a rule that would hurt drug company profits shortly after his broker bought him up to $90,000 worth of pharmaceutical stock.

GOP insider trading has been going on for a long time

March 30, 2017

Russian hired 1,000 people to create anti-Clinton 'fake news' in key US states during election, Trum

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk

The Kremlin paid an army of more than 1,000 people to create fake anti-Hillary Clinton news stories targeting key swing states, the leading Democrat on the committee looking into alleged Russian interference in the US election has said.

Senator Mark Warner, the Democrat ranking member, and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Republican Senator Richard Burr, appeared together at a press conference to give an update on the investigation ahead of the first witnesses appearing today.

Mr Warner said: “We know about the hacking, and selective leaks, but what really concerns me as a former tech guy is at least some reports – and we’ve got to get to the bottom of this – that there were upwards of a thousand internet trolls working out of a facility in Russia, in effect taking over a series of computers which are then called botnets, that can then generate news down to specific areas.


“It’s been reported to me, and we’ve got to find this out, whether they were able to affect specific areas in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, where you would not have been receiving off of whoever your vendor might have been, Trump versus Clinton, during the waning days of the election, but instead, ‘Clinton is sick’, or ‘Clinton is taking money from whoever for some source’ … fake news.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/russian-trolls-hilary-clinton-fake-news-election-democrat-mark-warner-intelligence-committee-a7657641.html

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Most of us knew about this in dec. Now its official

March 29, 2017

Anthony Reminds me of tRump and how right wing schmucks deal with him

March 29, 2017

Sir Richard Branson suggests New Zealand farmers swap cows for marijuana

Billionaire businessman Richard Branson has urged kiwi farmers to swap cows for cannabis.

Speaking to New Zealand broadcaster Newshub during a recent trip to the country, Mr Branson said that he sees a significant business opportunity for the country’s dairy farmers in marijuana.

"You should legalise it, grow it, tax it, regulate it," he said.

"I think that would be wonderful because obviously the amount of dairy cows that New Zealand has is damaging the rivers,” he added. “If you could put some of that land over into growing cannabis would be just as profitable for them, if not more profitable.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/richard-branson-new-zealand-farmers-marijuana-cows-cannabis-weed-profit-virgin-ceo-a7655371.html

March 28, 2017

Coca-Cola calls in police after human waste is found in cans theguardian.com

Coca-Cola has called in police to investigate how human waste turned up in a consignment of its drink cans at one of the company’s factories in Northern Ireland.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland confirmed on Tuesday it hadopened an inquiry into how faeces ended up in the cans at the Helllenic Bottling Company factory in Lisburn, Co Antrim.

Coca-Cola suspended night-time processing last week at the plant when machines became clogged.

The soft drinks giant said it impounded all the affected cans and that the contamination did not affect any products that were on sale. The cans arrive at the factory without tops, to be filled with the fizzy drink before they are sealed and sold across Northern Ireland.


https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/28/coca-cola-police-human-waste-drinks-cans

March 27, 2017

Campaign Zero creators launch tool to show you how to fight Trump's agenda in your state

The young minds behind the anti-police violence resource Campaign Zero launched an online tool on Monday that shows activists how to resist President Donald Trump's agenda at the local level. "Our States," a website that Mic previewed exclusively, gives users a state-by-state breakdown of bills that, if enacted, would strip civil rights and other legal protections from communities of color, women and LGBTQ people.

With Trump more than halfway through his first 100 days in the White House, much of the left's resistance has focused on the president's attempts to round up undocumented immigrants and restrict the travel of people from Muslim-majority nations. But focusing the fight at the federal level is potentially dangerous, Our States creators say. As Trump stumbles through his first months in office, Republican-controlled state legislatures are considering laws that would criminalize protests, restrict protections against LGBTQ discrimination and limit women's access to safe and legal abortions, among other proposals.

"The purpose of Our States is to ensure that citizens know the legislation being proposed in their respective state, so that they can mobilize to either support or oppose it," activist and Campaign Zero co-founder Deray Mckesson said in a statement to Mic. "The stakes are high."

There's urgency at the state level, Sam Sinyangwe, the data scientist behind Campaign Zero and lead coordinator of the Our States project said in an interview. Most of the 32 GOP-led legislatures will end their sessions for summer recesses in two months — and they'll have either passed anti-progressive measures out of committee, approved them for signature by their governors or defeated them on the floor.

https://mic.com/articles/172102/campaign-zero-creators-launch-tool-to-show-you-how-to-fight-trump-s-agenda-in-your-state#.asSrSHgXw

March 26, 2017

Lawmaker's 'peculiar midnight run' endangers Trump-Russia inquiry: theguardian.com 3/26/17

Nunes has been under scrutiny over the past week for other reasons. He is reported to have gone missing on Tuesday night, under mysterious circumstances. The Daily Beast reported that Nunes received a message on his phone while travelling in a Uber car with a senior committee staffer in Washington, and then left the car abruptly without telling the staffer where he was going.

The next day he called a press conference, without telling his senior staff what he was going to say, and announced that he had seen “dozens” of intelligence reports that showed US intelligence agencies had “incidentally collected” material on members of the Trump transition team.

Such incidental collection happens when court-approved surveillance of an intelligence target picks up communications involving US persons who are not the formal target of the surveillance.

Nunes did not share the intelligence material he claimed to have seen with Democratic members of his committee, and instead outraged them further by briefing Trump. He said later: “I had a duty and obligation to tell him because, as you know, he’s taking a lot of heat in the news media.”

The president later said he felt “somewhat” vindicated in his repeated claims to have been the target of an Obama administration wiretap, even though those claims have been repudiated by Comey, intelligence chiefs and senior Republicans who said there was no evidence for them.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/26/trump-russia-investigation-house-intelligence-devin-nunes

March 24, 2017

Repugs have a history of committing treason to obtain office: LBJ/Dirksen Phone Call about Nixon

March 23, 2017

Michigan will be best place to live by 2100 A.D. due to climate change

Thanks to changing climates, Michigan will be the best place to live by 2100, according to Popular Science.

The fine folks at Popular Science took a look at future climate in the US over the next 900 years, and decided that everyone would be moving to Michigan.

While many areas around Michigan would be suffering from rising sea levels, wildfires, mosquitos and hurricanes - Michigan would escape most of the drastic changes from climate change.

https://www.facebook.com/PopSci/videos/10154988157226411/

http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/michigan-will-be-best-place-to-live-by-2100-ad-due-to-climate-change

I personally don't think anyplace on earth will be fit to live

March 19, 2017

Republican terrorist fantasized about mudering 17,000 poor Americans at his college keggers by @im

Paul Ryan says he fantasized about cutting health care for the poor at his college keggers

Oh, college! It’s a time when young adults discover their professional interests, when they live alone for the first time, when many people come into their sexuality, and when youth get to explore other adult pleasures.
And, if you were House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), it was a time to dream about how, someday, you would take health care away from millions of poor people.
In a conversation with the National Review’s Rich Lowry on Friday, Ryan bragged about how conservatives now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take health coverage away from the most vulnerable Americans.

“So Medicaid,” Ryan told Lowry, “sending it back to the states, capping its growth rate. We’ve been dreaming of this since I’ve been around — since you and I were drinking at a keg. . . . I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a long time. We’re on the cusp of doing something we’ve long believed in.”
Ryan is 47 years old, which means that, if he started “drinking at a keg”

https://thinkprogress.org/paul-ryan-says-he-fantasized-about-cutting-health-care-for-the-poor-at-his-college-keggers-7aa0accc928b#.udd5i4xtv