U.S. Politics

[Rick Plant]

President Biden has done some remarkable things this year and this is all with GOP obstruction.   

1. Passed a Rescue Plan

2. Largest Infrastructure Bill in generations

3. Set record for job creation

4. Cut child poverty in half

5. More judges than any President in 50 years

6. Vaccinated 200m people

Back in March:

Biden signs $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan into law

Washington — President Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act into law on Thursday, finalizing an early policy victory that will send much-needed aid to millions of Americans still struggling from the COVID-19 pandemic.

"This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country and giving people in this nation, working people, middle class folks, people who built the country, a fighting chance," Mr. Biden said before signing the bill, one day earlier than expected.

The bill was narrowly approved by the House on Wednesday with a vote of 220 to 211, with one Democrat joining all Republicans in voting against it. It passed the Senate on Saturday with a 50 to 49 vote, also along party lines.

Mr. Biden signed the bill hours before delivering his first prime-time national address to mark the one-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has since taken more than 529,000 American lives. The White House said the president and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Atlanta next Friday, part of what the White House is calling the "Help is Here" tour to tout the new relief bill in cities around the country.

New CBS News polling shows that the bill is widely popular with the public, with three in four Americans approving of its passage. Two-thirds of Americans also say Mr. Biden is doing a good job in his handling of the pandemic.

The American Rescue Plan provides $1,400 direct payments to individuals making up to $75,000 annually, $350 billion in aid to state and local governments and $14 billion for vaccine distribution. The bill also provides $130 billion to elementary, middle and high schools to assist with safe reopening.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the first wave of direct deposit checks would begin hitting Americans' bank accounts as soon as this weekend.

It includes an additional $300 billion in weekly jobless benefits through September and an expanded tax credit of up to $3,600 per child, initially distributed in monthly installments. The child tax credit could raise 4 million children out of poverty, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

More than $50 billion will be distributed to small businesses, including $7 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program. The bill also provides $25 billion for relief for small and mid-sized restaurants, which have suffered significantly during the pandemic.

The measure expands eligibility for subsidies to purchase health insurance to people of all incomes under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a provision that was particularly controversial for Republicans who oppose the bill. It also incentivizes states to expand Medicaid under the ACA by having the federal government pay for new recipients. Several million people could save hundreds of dollars in health care costs once the bill becomes law.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-signs-covid-relief-bill-american-rescue-plan-into-law/

[Rick Plant]

GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert and husband racked up arrests in home district



Rep. Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting freshman Republican Colorado congresswoman who ran on a law-and-order platform, has had several dust-ups with police, starting as a teenager.

The 34-year-old lawmaker, who beat her district’s very conservative Rep. Scott Tipton in a primary upset last June, has a rap sheet unusually long for a member of Congress.

And her track record of thumbing her nose at the law continued this week after she tussled with Capitol Police officers over her refusal to walk through newly installed House metal detectors.

“I am legally permitted to carry my firearm in Washington, DC, and within the Capitol complex,” she tweeted in defiance, while calling the detectors “another political stunt by Speaker Pelosi.”

While the lawmaker was eventually allowed to enter the House chambers, she is facing growing questions about her possible role in assisting the deadly Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill. Just hours before the violence, she tweeted, “today is 1776.” In the days leading up to the unrest, Boebert made a spectacle of her intention to remain armed in the Capitol, earning another rebuke from local law enforcement.

Back in June 2015, Boebert was cuffed for disorderly conduct at a country music festival near Grand Junction, Colo., after police said she attempted to interfere in the arrest of minors busted for underage drinking and encouraged the accused to run off. Boebert said the revelers had not been read their Miranda rights and that the arrest was illegal.

"Lauren continued yelling and causing the underage drinkers to become unruly,” an arresting officer said in a statement at the time. “Lauren said multiple times that she had friends at Fox News and that the illegal arrest would be national news.” At the time, Boebert was running Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colo. The story was first reported by Colorado Newsline.

Boebert subsequently missed two court appearances and was arrested again in December 2015. The charge was dismissed.

A year later, in September 2016, Boebert was charged with careless driving and operating an unsafe vehicle after rolling her truck into a ditch, police said. When she failed to show up for court a month later, a warrant was issued for her arrest. She was booked on Feb. 13, 2017. She ultimately pleaded guilty to the unsafe vehicle charge and paid $123.50 in fines and court costs. The careless driving charge was dismissed. The incident was first reported by the Colorado Times Recorder.

"It’s certainly of concern that on a couple of occasions she apparently failed to appear for court,” Tom Silverman, a Democrat and former president of the Colorado Municipal Judges Association, told The Post. “I was disappointed when she was elected.”

Colin Wilhelm, a Colorado defense attorney and Democrat who plans to challenge Boebert in 2022, agreed: “It’s concerning when you claim to be a member of ‘back the blue’ and yet are so anti-authority when they are trying to do their job.”

In September 2010, Boebert was arrested after a neighbor, Michele Soet, accused Boebert’s two pit bulls of attacking Soet’s dog. Soet’s dog narrowly escaped injury after jumping into a van. The future legislator pleaded guilty to a single count of “dog at large,” paying a $75 fine.

Boebert’s future husband, Jayson, also had brushes with law enforcement. In January 2004, he was arrested after allegedly exposing himself to two women at a bowling alley, according to an arrest affidavit. Lauren Boebert (then age 17 and known as Lauren Opal Roberts) was also there. Jayson Boebert pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure, earning himself four days in jail and two years’ probation.

In February 2004, he was booked on a domestic violence charge, against Lauren Boebert. He “did unlawfully strike, shove or kick … and subjected her to physical contact,” a spokesman for the Garfield associate county court clerk told The Post. They had been dating at the time.

Jayson Boebert ultimately served seven days in jail. The busts were first unearthed by Colorado blogger Anne Landman.

Lauren Boebert took her revenge in May 2004 during an altercation with Jayson at his home in which she scratched his face and chest and trashed his residence, according to a police report. She was slapped with third-degree assault, criminal mischief and underage drinking charges. A rep for the Garfield County Combined Court said they could not reveal any information about the case’s final disposition.

The Boeberts married in 2005, and have four children.

Jayson Boebert did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.

https://nypost.com/2021/01/16/gop-rep-lauren-boebert-and-husband-have-racked-up-arrests/

[Rick Plant]

Republicans voted against the American Rescue Plan.

Charlie Crist touts $151 Million in Child Tax Cuts for Pinellas families

Pinellas County families have received more than $151 million since July from the Child Tax Credit  payments, U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist announced.

That accounts for 72,000 families within Crist’s district. The expanded Child Tax Credit, included in the American Rescue Plan, seeks to cut childhood poverty by 40%. The American Rescue Plan expanded the credit to up to $3,600 per child for children under 5, and $3,000 per child for children ages 6 to 17.

“One of the most impactful parts of that law was a historic expansion of the Child Tax Credit,” Crist said of the American Rescue Plan.

https://thetampabay100.com/politics-category/2021/12/15/charlie-crist-touts-151-million-in-child-tax-cuts-for-pinellas-families/18331

[Rick Plant]

Corrupt West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is blocking President Biden's agenda from passing which the overwhelming majority of Americans voted for and want to Build Back Better.

'Not everybody in West Virginia has a houseboat': CNN's Acosta on Joe Manchin



CNN's Jim Acosta called out Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) after he revealed he wouldn't support President Joe Biden's Build Back Better pan that would give Americans the child tax credit, tech neutral energy tax incentives and control of drug prices, as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) explained in his letter to his West Virginia colleague.

@RonWyden releases outline for the pillars of an updated BBB that might fit Sen. Manchin’s criteria while also bringing along progressives.

-Long-term expansion of the current child tax credit

-Tech neutral energy tax incentives

-Rx drug price control







Speaking to CNN political analyst John Avlon, Acosta noted, "I do think that Joe Manchin did mislead a lot of people in his party for many many months," said Acosta. "And yes, he may represent a MAGA state now and so on but not everybody in West Virginia has a houseboat."

"Traditionally one of the things centrists tend to do is they look at what's actually popular as opposed to ideological wishlist items that maybe have a minority of support in America, and they try to bring folks together. And I think the White House has been negotiating in good faith with Manchin," Avlon agreed. "And I think Manchin — you want to take at his word that he had been working with the president. But he pulled the plug the week before Christmas when so many of these items are not only popular but things that Manchin has supported in the past, things that would benefit his own constituents in West Virginia, things that would help the Democratic Party reach out to working-class voters who have suffered from the economic divide."

See the discussion below:

[Rick Plant]

Bank predicts American GDP will go down because Joe Manchin killed the human infrastructure plan



After Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) revealed that he would not support President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" plan, which is known as the "human infrastructure" bill, Dow Futures tumbled. Now, a major world bank is warning that they're readjusting predictions about American GDP.

Sunday evening Investors.com revealed that the stock market is predicted to tumble on Monday. Due to Manchin's interview with Fox News Sunday morning, the big bank Goldman Sachs gives the Biden bill a less than 50-50 chance of passing Congress. The company then lowered its 2022 GDP forecasts for the United States.

It puts Manchin in a difficult position to single-handedly hurt the U.S. economy, tweeted CNBC Contributor James Pethokoukis.

As Goldman said in the statement, "There is also still a chance that Congress retroactively extends the expanded child tax credit, with some modifications, though we think the odds of this occurring are less than even."

There is also a concern that anti-vaxxers are also causing COVID-19 to spread and evolve into yet another variant.

"While many questions remain unanswered, we now think a moderate downside scenario where the virus spreads more quickly but immunity against severe disease is only slightly weakened is most likely," said Goldman economist Joseph Briggs, CNN reported.

See the full statement below or at CNN.com:



https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/04/economy/goldman-sachs-us-gdp-omicron/index.html

[Rick Plant]

How Georgia's Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue conspired against democracy



Anyone in public life who supported, advocated, justified, participated in, financed or helped to organize the scheme to void the 2020 Electoral College vote, take away the voice of the people, and MacGyver state legislatures into keeping Donald Trump in the White House is guilty of conspiring to end American democracy.
History will record that as a fact.

Now, some might disagree. I mean, it’s not as if Republicans just hyped themselves into a frenzy with a totally groundless story about “voter fraud,” then used that frenzy as an excuse to throw out tens of millions of legitimate votes, cancel the election, overrule the American people and re-install a president whom voters had clearly and definitively rejected. If all that had happened, even the skeptics would have to agree they had conspired against democracy.

Of course, all that did happen.

So let’s call out some names:

You, David Perdue. You conspired to end American democracy. As a U.S. senator sworn to defend the Constitution, you instead supported efforts to trash that document. You conspired to throw out the 5 million votes that were cast legally and in good faith by your fellow Georgians so that Republican legislators could substitute their will for the will of the people. You did so for no other reason than you didn’t like the outcome.

You had – and have – no evidence of voter fraud to justify such breathtaking action. The laughable lawsuit that you recently filed accuses Fulton County election officials of “unlawful, erroneous, negligent, grossly negligent, willful, malicious, corrupt, deceitful, and intentional manipulation of votes.” It claims “Fulton County permitted great multitudes of fraudulent persons to fraudulently vote in the General Election using the name(s) of qualified and eligible Georgia voters.”

1. Produce these “great multitudes.” You have made the charge: Back it up.

If what you allege is true, then thousands of legally registered voters in Fulton County – if you believe Trump, tens of thousands – must have been barred from voting on Election Day because when they got to their precincts, they would have been told that somebody else had fraudulently cast ballots in their name through the absentee process.

So produce these “great multitudes.” You cannot. You cannot because they exist only in the land of unicorns, fairies, magic rainbows and GOP lawsuits.

I know, I know – we’ve all heard the excuse: The lawsuits are necessary to uncover the evidence that you’re sure is there. Yet that in itself is a damning admission. Given your support a year ago for blocking the transfer of power to President Biden, it is a confession that you were willing to subvert American democracy based on evidence that to this day you do not have.

Furthermore, in your campaign for governor you have made it clear that you would use the powers of that new office to do even worse in the next election, if given the chance. Indeed, that promise is the entire animating force behind your candidacy. And if you’ve somehow managed to convince yourself that all this nonsense is true, if that self-delusion helps you sleep better at night, it doesn’t make the Big Lie any less of a lie. It just makes you a bigger fool.

But of course, Perdue is far from alone.

You, then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler, joined Perdue last year in supporting a Texas lawsuit that would have rendered 5 million Georgia voters voiceless in the presidential election, based on the false claim of 80,000 forged absentee ballots in our state. Your fellow Republican, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, had condemned that suit as “constitutionally, legally and factually wrong,” but that didn’t deter you in the slightest. No defender of the Constitution or democracy would have taken the momentous step of trying to throw out millions of ballots without overwhelming evidence. You did so with no evidence whatsoever.

Twenty-eight state legislators also joined in supporting that ridiculous lawsuit, as did seven House members from Georgia. Again, we should name names: House members Jody Hice, Rick Allen, Buddy Carter, Doug Collins, Drew Ferguson, Barry Loudermilk, Austin Scott: You too have conspired against American democracy. When the vote of the people of Georgia went against your candidate, you tried to silence their voice, and all but Scott did so again on the House floor on Jan. 6.

Hice is now running for Georgia secretary of state, the office entrusted with the sacred power of guaranteeing the fairness and legitimacy of our democratic republic. As with Perdue, the entire reason for Hice’s candidacy is his eagerness to use the powers of that office to succeed next time where he and others failed last time. He has no other platform, no other agenda.

Hice, Perdue and too many other GOP candidates are asking the people of Georgia not just to validate their past attempts to subvert democracy. They are asking that you join in that conspiracy, that you participate in it.

Don’t do that.

https://georgiarecorder.com

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence.

[Rick Plant]

Every House Republican voted against a monthly insulin co-pay cap

About a century ago, Dr. Frederick Banting patented the lifesaving drug insulin. Insulin is a hormone that controls blood sugar  levels by helping one’s body use and store glucose in the bloodstream.

While insulin is naturally produced and secreted by one’s pancreas in healthy individuals, people with diabetes either cannot produce insulin, produce insufficient levels of insulin, or do not respond to the presence of insulin in the bloodstream and thus require alternative medication to control their blood sugar.

Regardless of Dr. Banting’s good will, skyrocketing insulin prices have now put the drug out of reach of many across the globe that Banting sought to help. Back in the 1920s, Banting and his colleagues sold the patent for insulin to the University of Toronto for $1 each. Imagine...

For decades, the diabetes community in America has bore the exhausting weight of heavy insulin costs —  the price of which nearly tripled between 2002 and 2013, according to an American Diabetes Association study. In fact, Americans have paid more than 10 times as much for insulin than Canadians do, according to a commentary published in the Nov. 7, 2019 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Since 2012, list prices of many modern forms of insulin have risen rapidly, with average annual increases cited at more than 15%. As a result, the United States is a global outlier on the amount of money spent on insulin products annually. The U.S. represents approximately 15% of the global insulin market, but generates nearly half of the industry’s insulin revenue.

As a result of high costs, one in four insulin-dependent Americans reported needing to ration their insulin on a monthly basis.

Without a doubt, this is absolutely despicable — and moreover, it’s just flat-out  wrong.

Believe me, if my diabetic grandmother was still here, she’d have some choice words, that’s for darn sure.

Sorry, Lucille.

I hear enough medical dispatches over the scanner on a weekly basis about insulin-related incidents. It’s about time things change. Without a doubt, this is an issue that hits close to home for many Oswego County residents.

Insulin price-gouging and associated high costs in the United States are largely a consequence of the exact opposite of the definition of a “free market,” so much so that a monopoly exists on a lifesaving drug that, if not acquired, could amount to a massive death toll, especially among the senior citizen population of this country.

U.S. laws have allowed “Big Pharma” and pharmaceutical manufacturers set their own prices and raise them without limit. Secondly, as the situation stands, a significant competitor in the U.S. insulin market has not come along to shift things up. It’s complicated to explain, for insulin is a complex compound, and there’s biological barriers that exist as well.

According to Volume 7 of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, Insulin is a biologic, which is a drug “derived from living materials, including viruses, therapeutic serums, toxins and antitoxins, vaccines, blood and blood products, and cells, tissues, and gene therapy products.” Most drugs are small molecule drugs, which are regulated under the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) and approved under a New Drug Application (NDA) or associated accelerated pathway. Most biologics are approved through a Biologics License Application (BLA) under the Public Health Service Act (PHS Act). However, insulin was approved before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) created the biologics approval process and was regulated as a small molecule drug under the FDCA until March 23, 2020. Only three companies — Novo Nordisk, Sanofi, and Eli Lilly — provide insulin to American dependents, despite the existence of several other manufacturers globally.

If you’re confused, that’s totally fine.

What you need to know is this: with multiple barriers to entry in existence, current insulin manufacturers have esentially blocked the introduction of such products by making it virtually impossible to obtaining new patents based on inventions such as insulin delivery devices and products that focus on less invasive measures, such as discreet insulin ports, tubes, etc.

How did any right-minded politician allow this to happen?

It’s too late to ask that question, ‘cause they downright did.

Thankfully, the American Diabetes Association® (ADA) hailed a major victory  recently when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better Act, including the most sweeping nationwide effort to date to put a cap on out-of-pocket co-pays for insulin. The national co-pay cap, which the ADA has aggressively advocated for and promoted, would apply to Medicare beneficiaries, individuals on private insurance, and those covered by other group health plans.

ADA-led efforts around the country advocated for co-pay caps. Thankfully, legislation has been enacted in 20 states and the District of Columbia.

“These states paved the way for this week’s historic action in the House,” said Lisa Murdock, chief advocacy officer for the ADA. “We thank those members of the House of Representatives who supported a national insulin co-pay cap, building on the efforts of state leaders before them. Together, these leaders are working to ensure that millions of people with diabetes will be able to afford their insulin and will not have to skip doses or ration because they don’t have enough money to pay for this life-saving drug,” Murdock said.

Nevertheless, not a single House Republican voted for capping insulin costs in the Build Back Better Act. And you can damn well bet they know people ­— family, friends, coworkers — who are diabetic and dependent on insulin. Many of those people would benefit from a $35/mo. cap on insulin price.

http://www.oswegocountynewsnow.com/opinion/every-house-republican-voted-against-a-monthly-insulin-co-pay-cap/article_91a63ac2-4c7c-11ec-aa15-c3d111ee14aa.html