If We Don't Stop Billionaires From Buying Up The Political System, We Will All Soon Be Their Slaves

I first ran across Houston hedge fund billionaire John Arnold and his wife Laura when I noticed them spending millions of dollars supporting California fake Democrat Ro Khanna, school privatization and charter school advocacy, of the kind John Oliver discusses in the video above. The vile Arnolds have made their fortune through fracking and charter schools and they happily push their greedy agenda by financing right-wing candidates, some Republicans but primarily Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party, like, besides Khanna (their biggest candidate investment), corrupt characters Darren Soto (FL), Josh Gottheimer (NJ), Ami Bera (CA), and repulsive and power-hungry Rahm Emanuel protégée, Illinois Blue Dog Cheri Bustos.

This cycle they teamed up with a Marco Rubio operative, a dip-shit named Thomas Datwyler, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in FL-09 in order to bolster Darren Soto-- a right-wing NRA-poster boy masquerading as a Democrat and running for Alan Grayson's old congressional seat in the Orlando area. The Common Sense Leadership PAC is running a barrage of independent expenditures against Dena Grayson and in favor of Soto-- over $200,000 so far, but with expenditures accelerating by the day. Ironically, their vicious attacks on Grayson have been augmented by the sleaziest and least trustworthy of all Democratic groups, EMILY's List, which has, over the last decade, become expert at spreading lies and distortions. Hedge fund criminal Donald Sussman has given EMILY's List $2 million to spend against Grayson and Michael Bloomberg gave EMILY's List another million, some of which is being used against Soto and some against Grayson. It's ironic that EMILY's List is spending their donors' money to smear a pro-choice woman doctor in such a way that could well result in the election of a virulently anti-choice, right-wing tool like Soto who has been publicly endorsed by the Wall Street-owned and operated New Dems.

The Arnolds, vampires

Although some of the Arnold's money ($44,917) has gone into pro-Soto efforts, the big money is all being spent tp smear Grayson, smearing being a John and Laura Arnold trademark whenever it comes to progressives. This is how predatory billionaires like the Arnolds seeks to advance their political agenda, by helping elect puppet candidates like Darren Soto who will support their bid to destroy public education, one of the long-term goals of these people. As Jeff Bryant wrote for CommonDreams yesterday, "[John] Oliver focused much of his attention on Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, three states with especially depressing charter track records-- including negligence in the approval process and school executives embezzling funds."

None of Oliver’s critics seriously refuted the crux of his argument that there might be something fundamentally wrong by design, rather than by implementation or intent, with the idea that  a “free market” of privately operated and essentially unregulated schools is a surefire way to improve education opportunities for all students.

Indeed, charter schools are “here to stay” has become a refrain among advocates for these schools, even though there’s no doubt the controversy caused by this new parallel school system is just beginning, and no one can predict what the ongoing conflict will lead to.

The charter industry is currently responsible for educating a small percentage of students-- just 6–7 percent nationally and barely measurable in many communities, especially more well-to-do metropolitan and rural areas. A minority of Americans and relatively few politicians completely understand what charter schools are. And most experts have mixed views on the purpose of the schools.

However, what charter advocates generally won’t admit is that many of the problems these schools cause are reflective of what inevitably seems to happen when an essential public service is privatized.

The charter industry claims its schools are “public” institutions because they get tax dollars, but that’s like saying a defense contractor is a public business because it takes in revenues from the federal government.

Numerous experts point out charter schools blur the line from what it means to be a public institution providing a public good and that, by their very design, they expand opportunities to profiteer from public tax dollars and privatize public assets.

People in communities affected by these schools are just beginning to see the conflicts these institutions cause, and it’s just a matter of time before government officials at all levels are forced to respond to the increasing concerns with these schools.

Just consider recent actions taken by the Department of Justice to curtail the expansion of the private prison industry-- a privatization trend that generally predates the rise of the charter industry.

As Mother Jones reports, after “a damning report on the safety, security, and oversight of private prisons,” DOJ announced it would stop contracting with these institutions.

Donald Cohen, who leads In the Public Interest, an organization that researches problems posed by privatizing public services, writes for Huffington Post, privately operated prisons are fundamentally flawed because the business model they must follow encourages the companies to “actively seek new prisoners to fill facilities they own.”

As ITPI has previously reported, “in an effort to provide the service with fewer resources while also maximizing profits, [private prison] companies often cut corners, reducing the quality, effectiveness, and accessibility of the service.”

“The more contractors can cut costs on running their facilities, the wider their profit margins,” writes Aman Banerji for the Roosevelt Institute. “No wonder … private prisons contracted by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) contain one or more security deficiencies, health service deficiencies, and a greater number of food grievances.”

This clear and obvious conflict of interest-- between serving the public and rewarding private enterprise-- led to a misalignment with DOJ’s mission to hold an essential function of government to the high standards the public demands.

If the charter school industry believes it can avoid this conflict, it’s kidding itself.

More than one attentive blogger has noticed the striking similarities between charter schools and the private prison industry. In one of these posts, Mitchell Robinson notes that charters, like private prisons, differ from the public counterparts by not being locally managed or controlled, not providing the same level of services and programs, and not answering to the same level or degree of regulation and oversight.

Over the years, the US Department of Education has rewarded charter schools with over $3.3 billion in federal funds, and with passage of the most recent federal education law, the every Student Succeeds Act, USDoE will send $333 million more to these schools before the current fiscal year is over.

Remarking on the actions DOJ took to end tax dollars going to the private prison industry, Banerji concludes, “It offers an opportunity to contest the privatization of state services beyond the prison system.”

Let’s hope reexamining the role of charter schools is the next step.

Why Are There Blue America Billboards Up All Over Polk County?

The Blue America billboard up top went up on Tuesday on U.S. Highway 27 in Polk County, in Haines City to be more specific. We put a few different boards up on Winter Haven, Lake Wales, and Davenport. It wasn't something we were planning. In fact, our plan for FL-09 was to hold our collective breath and hope one of two excellent progressives, Dena Grayson and Susannah Randolph, would beat Florida's biggest NRA shill, conservative state Senator Darren Soto. Then Soto was endorsed by the New Dems. As of the August 10 FEC reporting deadline he had raised the most of anyone in the race-- $733,132-- and spent the most-- $676,176. But the two progressives, Susannah and Dena were competitive, with, respectively $693,663 and $535,036 raised. The only outside spending I detected was from a shadowy group called True Blue Florida that, I believe, is associated with Susannah and that spent $55,948 smearing Soto. There's no record of who put up the money.

My fear all along was that Susannah and Dena would split the progressive vote and Soto would win up winning the race. I was hoping one of them would put to the new district next door and challenge a right-wing fossil, John Mica, who could get swept away in an anti-Trump tsunami. Instead, the DCCC invented some candidate and inserted her into the Mica race. But then two things happened. Dena started consistently pulling ahead in polling so that it appears she would have the best chance to beat Soto. And then Holly Fussell, a friend of Susannah's had a pretty horrifying experience. I first heard about it from Lucy Flores, the Nevada Berniecrat. Yesterday I asked Holly and she sent me this and told me to share it with DWT readers.

The Hardest Part of Being a Working Woman
-by Holly Fussell

I’ve heard that the hardest part of being a working woman today is choosing between success in your career or your family. I don’t have kids-- but I’m still pretty sure that even if I did, this wouldn’t be true for me. The hardest part for me, being a working woman, is having to choose between success in my career and reporting sexual harassment and sexual assault.

During my time working with Susannah Randolph, candidate for Congress in FL-09, she told me that my many complaints of sexual harassment weren’t valid-- that they should be excused because the man had been drinking. After witnessing this same man threaten my career because I refused his advances, Susannah promoted him, and once again, encouraged me to forgive and forget because he had been drinking.

I recognize now that I should have told someone else I worked with-- but at that time, Susannah was the most senior female staffer, and she had also been my longtime friend and mentor. I trusted her judgment. I convinced myself that she was just looking out for my best interests. But she wasn’t. When this same man suggested that I increase our online fundraising numbers by sending a picture of my breasts to our email list, Susannah laughed right along with him.

After over a year of sexually harassing me without consequence, he raped me. I didn’t have the courage to report it at the time. I was terrified it would ruin my career, and doubted I would get any kind of justice anyway. I struggled to accept that this horrible thing had happened to me, and felt that I had nobody to go to who could give me advice, since the one woman I had always gone to for career advice had ignored my complaints.

I don’t blame Susannah for my sexual assault-- not in the slightest. That is the sole fault of the rapist himself. But I remain deeply disturbed that she ignored my very serious complaints for so long, and that she would promote a man she had witnessed sexually harass me. Perhaps even worse, although she knows I accused this man of rape, she continues to maintain a relationship with him (he was fired when I eventually told another supervisor about the situation, so I no longer have to work with him). You can find him on her campaign’s current FEC report over a dozen times.

It took me a long time to work up the courage to tell this story. I hoped that my post earlier this week, which didn’t include the graphic details, would be enough. But since posting that, I have received a number of complaints, mostly from progressive female activists, disgustingly enough, denying that these awful things happened to me, complaining of the timing of my post, and criticizing me for using Facebook to share my concerns.

But you know what? I tried to use different mediums, many different times over the past few years, and none of them have worked. I tried for so long to work this issue out privately. But that is no longer an option. I cannot sit by silently and watch Susannah Randolph be placed in a position of power, where she can continue to deny her employees’ accusations of sexual harassment, especially considering her continued relationship with my rapist. I can’t have that on my conscience.

I am not working for any of the candidates running against her, nor have I worked for any of their campaigns. Sharing my story has already cost me many of the people I believed were my friends, as well as my relationships with several progressive organizations that I’ve worked so hard to build. For the rest of my life now, when I apply for a job, people will know that I have complained of sexual harassment, and while that shouldn’t make me less employable, realistically, we all know it will hurt my future career prospects. But if I can stop her from doing this again, if I can stop this from happening to another girl, it will have all been worth it.

I’m not encouraging you to vote for anyone in particular. I’m simply encouraging to consider my story before you vote for Susannah.

I think that story getting around is horrifying and also liable to make it even more difficult for Susannah to beat Soto, which is my main concern for this primary. So we put this billboard up too. This one is on the I-4 west of exit 55 in Davenport.

Rather than ask you to contribute to the Blue America PAC's independent expenditure committee that pays for these kinds of things, I want to ask you to make a contribution to Dena Grayson's campaign instead. You can do that by tapping on the thermometer below:

Why Do We Pay The Highest Prices For Drugs In The World?

And why is Bernie blocking Obama's nominee for FDA head? Obama's done a lot of good things as president and there's a tendency for progressives to be favorable towards him. But it behooves us to remember he's a politician-- from Chicago-- and that he's done a lot of bad things as well and to be wary of what he's up to now. Bernie's 100% right to block Obama's FDA nominee-- and 100% is more than 99%.

This morning in a letter to his supporters, southwest Michigan congressional candidate Paul Clements, a progressive who supported Bernie in the primary, asked "What does a 10% cost increase mean to you? For many seniors a 10% increase in the cost of medication can mean the difference between this medicine or that one, between taking the whole pill, or half. Or it can mean the difference between food and medicine. Right now our laws put corporate profit above seniors' needs. A new independent analysis published yesterday says the cost of hundreds of medications in the Medicare Part D program rose by 10% since 2014. Even more, the cost of simply enrolling in Part D rose 13% over last year alone. We need to let the government negotiate drug prices. In Congress I will be a leading proponent for it, and Congressman Upton has led efforts banning such negotiations. That's why I'm running, because simple, practical changes to our laws can make life changing differences to millions of Americans." (You can support Clements' bid to defeat anti-health care reactionary Fred Upton here. His opponent, Fred Upton, is among the biggest bribe takers from Mylan and Big Pharma in general, and makes sure their agenda sails through his committee and through Congress.)

A few days ago, Lee Rogers broke the story about how Joe Manchin's greed-driven, avaricious daughter-- who, like her father, has a clear record of being a cheat and a lowlife-- right here at DWT. Yesterday Lee reminded me that aside from the Manchin daughter giving herself a 671% pay increase to celebrate all the people who would die when she raised the price of EpiPen-- from $2,453,456 nine years ago to $18,931,068 today-- she also illegally used inside information to trade over 100,000 shares in early August, anticipating her company's stock collapsing when news broke about Mylan's plan to murder their customers. The average price she got was around $50/share, bringing the greedy little monster $5,010,000.00, leaving her with another 828,318 shares valued at $41,415,900.00. The share price has been crashing ever since Rogers wrote his piece about how she raised the price of EpiPen to $635. (from $57).

And this is how the stock was performing as I was writing this post:

Were the Manchin daughter to sell her 100,200 shares at $43 instead of the $50 she sold it at when only she knew what was about to happen, she would have netted $4,308,600, nearly a million dollars less than she was able to bank. I have a vague recollection from my days working inside corporate America that insider trading is highly illegal and that all senior level executives are warned about the dangers, but from what I've been able to discern, she hasn't been fired or arrested yet-- or even questioned.

The Manchin daughter is a former lobbyist for the company and when she took over as CEO, the amount Mylan spent on lobbying soared astronomically. She contributes to political campaigns-- a legalistic term for bribery-- through the Generic Pharmaceutical Association, which spent $175,448 bribing members of Congress last cycle. The crooked Members who took the biggest bribes in 2014 were notoriously corrupt Republicans Mitch McConnell (KY), Joe Pitts (PA), Fred Upton (MI) and Lamar Alexander (TN) and so far this cycle Manchin's daughter has made sure the crooked members who got greased we're Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Tim Scott (R-SC), hometown boy David McKinley (R-WV), Keith Rothfus (R-PA), Fred Upton (MI) again... and she made sure Pelosi's corrupt DCCC chairman Ben Ray Lujan got a taste as well. And what did she want for her bribes? Mylan successfully pushed through legislation to encourage use of the EpiPen in schools nationwide, as well as about $4 million in lobbying for the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act.

Michael Hiltzik pointed out for L.A. Times readers that little Heather, Manchin's horrid daughter, has condoned a tax-dodging scheme for her company as well, as had Rogers when he first broke the story on Monday. "[T]here’s another reason," wrote Hiltzik, "to detest this remarkably amoral corporation: It’s also a tax dodger. Mylan is one of the leading exploiters of the technique known as inversion, in which a U.S. company cuts its tax bill by acquiring a foreign firm and moving its tax domicile to the acquired company’s homeland." Heather's not making America great again.

Mylan’s 2014 deal involved its buying a generics manufacturer from Abbott Laboratories and reincorporating in the Netherlands, the subsidiary’s home. As in all inversions, nothing else changed: Mylan’s operational headquarters remained in Pennsylvania, and its main workforce didn’t relocate. At one point, Mylan even appealed to U.S. antitrust officials to help it block a takeover bid from an Israeli company. But the deal did allow the firm to cut its U.S. tax bill.

President Obama has labeled inversions “unpatriotic” and “one of the most insidious loopholes out there.” The Treasury Department has tightened tax rules several times to discourage them, and public disapproval has spiked a deal here and there.

Mylan’s inversion helped give this variety of loophole its noxious reputation, in part because defense of its deal was so transparently self-serving. Its CEO, Heather Bresch, daughter of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), wrung her hands over the anguish she suffered in deciding to skip out on the company’s obligations as a U.S. corporation. She told the New York Times, “You can’t maintain competitiveness by staying at a competitive disadvantage. I mean you just can’t.” Credulously, the Times regurgitated that she made the decision “reluctantly, and she genuinely seems to mean it.”

Should Mylan be believed? Let’s judge it by its marketing of the EpiPen. The spring-loaded syringe-like device is designed to deliver a measured dose of epinephrine, which instantly reverses the swelling, breathing problems and other manifestations of severe reactions to peanuts, bee stings and other allergens. The pens come in two-packs in order to provide a second dose if needed. Families with allergy-prone kids have to lay in a supply of several packs, say for home and school, and replace them once a year when they expire.

Since acquiring rights to the product in 2007 when a two-pack sold for about $100, Mylan has relentlessly raised its price, to more than $600 now. That can place the product out of reach of families whose insurance doesn’t fully cover the cost, forcing them to use expired pens or resort to hand-injections, which can be dangerous.

The price increase isn’t driven by Mylan’s costs. The manufacturing cost is essentially pennies per device, and the active ingredient, epinephrine, is a generic drug that has been in use for decades, so the company isn’t working down any research and development costs. Instead, it’s simply profiteering from market dynamics: Its main competitor, a product made by Sanofi, was taken off the market last year because of manufacturing defects. Another potential rival, from the generics company Teva, hasn’t yet won approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Mylan’s price-gouging has enraged patients and doctors and created whitecaps on Capitol Hill. On Monday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), ranking member of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, asked the Federal Trade Commission to look into the matter. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, also has questioned the increases.

“There does not appear to be any justification for the continual price increases of EpiPen,” Klobuchar wrote the FTC. “Manufacturing costs for the product have been stable and Mylan does not need to recover the product’s research and development costs... Not only is this alarming price increase unjustified, it puts life-saving treatment out of reach to the consumers who need it most.”

Mylan rationalizes the EpiPen’s price as the fair cost of “a life-saving drug,” as Bresch told Wall Street analysts this month. Under the circumstances, she said, “I think that you can see it falls as not an expensive product.” She did acknowledge, however, that “as employers shift more cost to employees and make that everything has got to come out of pocket before you hit your deductible... you’re seeing a lot of noise around EpiPen.”

A lot of profit too. Mylan recorded $847 million in net income last year on sales of $9.4 billion. The EpiPen was a significant contributor, with sales of $1 billion.

The company has tried to have it both ways in relation to its inversion deal. Let’s examine Bresch’s assertion that the company found it just impossible to “maintain competitiveness” under U.S. tax rules. At a 2015 forum sponsored by Fortune Magazine, she griped that “there is an unlevel playing field in our country. We really penalize U.S.-based companies.”

Is that so? As we pointed out at the time of its inversion, over the previous two years, its sales had increased 12.7% and profits 16%; among its big competitors paying putatively lower taxes, British-based GlaxoSmithKline had gained only 3.14% in sales and 11.23% in profits. Israel-based Teva’s sales had risen 11%, and its profits declined 54%. Israel’s top corporate tax rate is 26.5%, the equivalent top U.S. federal rate is 35%.

But Mylan didn’t pay that top rate, of course. Almost no U.S. corporation does; CEOs use the statutory rate as a political boogeyman. Mylan’s effective tax rate had been only 16.2% in 2013, 20% in 2012 and 17.7% in 2011.

Bresch’s contention that Mylan was a “reluctant” inverter doesn’t hold much water. At that Fortune event, she reiterated the claim that Mylan hadn’t been seeking an inversion partner but had been willing to look into a deal “if the opportunity presented itself.” But she also seemed to say that its search for a partner was rather more proactive than that. “When we were inverting, we … looked at a lot of countries because we had the opportunity to really domicile where we wanted to, and the Netherlands was a... natural.”

Corporate mouthpieces and other defenders of inversions say there’s nothing wrong-- even something admirable-- in a company’s trying to do the best for its shareholders by cutting their tax bites. The argument is: “You don’t like it? Change the tax law.”

The problem with this position is that U.S. corporations have lots of advantages over foreign competitors that have to be paid for by taxes; inversions just amount to sticking the cost to someone else. Mylan itself proved this point last year, when it tried to fend off a takeover attempt by Teva by asking the U.S. government to declare it a U.S. company. That would have given U.S. antitrust officials the opportunity to block the takeover by a foreign company. Teva’s takeover attempt eventually broke down anyway.

Dena Grayson is running for an open congressional seat in central Florida. Her statement on Mylan is exactly the kind of strong position voters are looking from for leaders. Please wrap your head around what she's saying and then, if you agree, consider contributing to her campaign here.

"As a doctor and medical researcher, I know first-hand how much innovative new treatments can relieve suffering and save lives. And I know that it takes many years and extraordinary effort to discover and develop effective treatments for deadly diseases. But this isn’t scientific innovation by Manchin’s daughter at Mylan. It’s good ol' fashioned greed, plain and simple. Even worse, it's at the cost of the most vulnerable members of our society: sick kids. While Manchin’s avaricious daughter relaxes in her mansion, parents are forced to make a choice that no parent should ever have to make: whether to protect their child from dying from a fatal allergic attack, versus paying the rent. Yes, Mylan produces a tried and true medicine that saves lives, but it’s not innovative. It’s as though Mylan stumbled upon an cheap, old print of a Monet painting in their grandmother’s attic, and are now trying to pass it off as an original masterpiece. If Mylan is unable or unwilling to control their greed, then we will have to do it for them. Plain and simple."

Blue America has billboards up all over Polk County right now

UPDATE:

Manchin's not very bright daughter-- and utterly devoid of a moral compass-- has cost Mylan's shareholders in the realm of $3 billion dollars, just so she could pocket a few million for herself. So far she's still neither fired nor arrested... but I bet no one's too happy about this:

Today Is The First Day Of Early Voting For The Florida Primaries

Today is the first day of early voting for the August 30 Florida primary. As it always does, the corrupt, self-serving establishment has candidates it's trying to slip in, incumbents like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and even worse garbage, like Patrick Murphy, it's trying to advance up the ladder. This is the last great stand of the 2016 Democratic primary season-- where genuine progressives like Alan Grayson, Bob Poe and Tim Canova are battling all the worst the Democratic Party has to offer.

Grayson's wife, Dr. Dena Grayson, is the strongest candidate in his old district to beat back a challenge from a very conservative pro-NRA Democratic state Senator. "We progressives, not Republicans or faux-Democrats, are the only ones who are truly committed to helping people," she told us. "The way to turn Florida blue is simple. We need to stop running Republican-lite candidates masquerading as Democrats, and instead, support true progressive who recognize people's needs and will take action to improve their lives."

As the Sun Sentinel put it a few days ago, "A Canova win over Wasserman Schultz would send shockwaves across the country." Those are just the kind of shockwaves the Democratic Party establishment needs and needs badly. Yesterday, Tim was finally able to force Wasserman Schultz into a serious TV debate after she dodged and ducked for months. She was the living, breathing embodiment of why Americans are sick and tired of self-serving career politicians and she refused to answer point blank questions about medical marijuana and her private prison campaign donors, although at the last second of the debate, the moderator cornered her like a rat and got her to admit she is pro-fracking. Unfortunately, almost 10,000 Democrats in FL-23 had already voted by mail. "Sadly, today, she takes hundreds of thousands of dollars from industries like Big Sugar, Wall Street banks, predatory lenders and private prisons," explained Tim in one of the radio ads our contributions helped him pay for. "I believe you either represent the corporate lobbyists or you represent the people. You cannot do both."



Alan Grayson, the progressive in the Senate race for Marco Rubio's seat, understands better than anyone what's wrong with Democratic Party politics in his state. "Florida Democrats," he told us yesterday, "are demonstrating Einstein's definition of insanity-- they keep nominating right-wing DINOs for statewide office, they keep losing, and they keep expecting that the results will change. They won't. We have now lost 14 out of the last 15 state government campaigns, going back to when Jeb Bush was Governor, because our Democratic voters have absolutely no idea what our candidates will do for them if they are elected. (The only exception was when a Democrat snuck into office because even Florida voters couldn't stomach a GOP candidate for "Chief Financial Officer" who was hopelessly corrupt.) Florida Republicans promise abortion restrictions, pro-gun laws, cuts in social services, lower taxes and corporate welfare-- and they deliver. Florida right-wing Democrats promise I-don't-know-what, and they can't even deliver on that. As for me, I have promised to improve the lives of ordinary people in Central Florida, and I've delivered on those promises. And I'm the only Democrat to represent downtown Orlando in Congress in the past 42 years. Coincidence? No."

Now Blue America is asking you to help make sure our slate of Florida progressives make it out of the primaries on the 30th to go on and beat reactionary Republicans like Marco Rubio, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Matt Caldwell and Mario Diaz-Balart. You can pick and choose at the thermometer below... or just contribute to all of them. They're all excellent, well-vetted progressive Democrats. And they need some help.

When It Comes To The Zika Emergency, Even Mr. Trumpanzee Has More Sense Than Congressional Republicans

The headline that everyone picked up on from Señor Trumpanzee's interview with the Miami Herald Thursday was all about his deranged plans for the Guantánamo gulag he seems so enthralled with. Reporter Patricia Mazzei quotes him saying American citizens could be tried there and points out that "under current federal law, it’s illegal to try U.S. citizens at military commissions" and that only Congress could change that. But there was more worth reading, from Trumpanzee denial of human activity being involved with Climate Change to his breaking with the GOP's obstruction of President Obama's proposals to fight Zika.

On Miami’s Zika outbreak, Trump said he would “let some of the funds that they’re asking for come in” to fight the virus.

He would ask Congress to do that?

“Yeah, I would. Absolutely,” he said, in apparent agreement with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and Florida Republicans from both political parties who have urged lawmakers to help fund the Zika response. “They’re fighting for it, and hopefully that’s going to be approved very soon.”

“It’s a tough thing to stop anyway,” he added about the mosquito-borne virus, praising Republican Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Trump supporter. “But they’re spraying all over the place. I see it. And I think it’ll be fine.”

Does he? Floridians aren't as cavalier about it. One running for a seat due north of Miami is Dr. Dena Grayson in Orlando, a progressive with both an MD and a Ph.D and a devotion to actual science instead of bullshit. She's leading virologist who has spent years researching cures for diseases including cancer, Ebola and Zika and her work has been widely published in theworlkd's most significant scientific journals. Even before Trump stumbled into the dispute, she told us that "Health experts "have been warning us for months that it’s not 'if, it’s when' we would see the first case of a person infected by a mosquito in the U.S. We are literally in a race against time, and thanks to the utter aversion of science-phobic Republicans to spend money on anything other than walls, weapons, or war, our efforts to combat Zika virus are falling behind." She wants Central Florida residents to remember that since the Obama administration’s first request for funding-- and its rejection by House Republicans-- early this year, at least 15 babies have been born with devastating and irreversible brain damage, and 479 pregnant women in the U.S. have been infected with Zika virus. "Republicans," she said, "prefer to play petty politics and the blame game, rather than acknowledge the cold, hard facts that are staring them right in the face... The ongoing Zika virus outbreak has been unfolding since early this year in the U.S., and and even earlier than that in Central and South America. Democrats, of course, embrace science and quickly recognized the threat to public health. Back in February, the Obama administration asked Congress to approve $1.9 billion in funding to combat Zika virus. Republicans, in predictable fashion, balked at spending money on anything science-based. Since then, over 1,800 cases of Zika virus have been diagnosed in the U.S., but because 80% of infected individuals don't ever show symptoms, the actual number of people with Zika is likely closer to 7,200, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control)... Ominously, starting in late July, Zika virus is now being spread by mosquitoes in Florida, with at least 17 cases of 'mosquito-borne' infection already confirmed."



Since Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Speaker Paul Ryan have chosen to ignore the pleas of the entire Florida congressional delegation-- both parties-- to call Congress back into session to deal seriously with Zika, the president decided ignore their childish game=playing and just shift $81 million away from biomedical research and antipoverty and health care programs to pay for the development of a Zika vaccine, as part of an emergency.

Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the secretary of health and human services, told members of Congress in a letter that without the diverted funds, the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority would run out of money to confront the mosquito-borne illness by the end of the month. That would force the development of a vaccine to stop at a critical time, as locally acquired cases of Zika infection increase in Miami.

As of last week, 7,350 cases of Zika had been reported in the United States, most in Puerto Rico, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ms. Burwell said that 15 infants had been born with Zika-related birth defects. The virus can cause abnormal brain development and other serious defects in children born to infected mothers.

The local spread of the illness in the continental United States, with the first cases reported late last month, has raised the political stakes surrounding the federal government’s response. Hillary Clinton on Tuesday made a campaign stop in Wynwood, the Miami neighborhood that has had a rash of locally transmitted Zika cases, and pressed Congress to return from its five-week break to approve emergency funding to fight the virus.

President Obama and congressional Republicans have been at odds for most of the year over Zika. In February, Mr. Obama requested $1.9 billion in emergency funding. Republicans balked, demanding a more detailed accounting of where the money would go.

Lawmakers have feuded for months over how much money should be earmarked and how it should be spent. Last month, Democrats blocked consideration of a Republican measure that would have allocated $1.1 billion to fight Zika but included provisions that would have banned funding for Planned Parenthood to provide contraception related to the virus, which can be sexually transmitted.

...“The failure to pass a Zika emergency supplemental has forced the administration to choose between delaying critical vaccine development work and raiding other worthy government programs to temporarily avoid these delays,” Ms. Burwell wrote... Even then, Ms. Burwell said, the additional money will last only through next month, at which point agencies would have to “severely curtail many of their critical efforts” against Zika without action from Congress.

"The president asked for funding to combat an emergency in this state," Dr. Alina Valdes in the Miami-Dade area told us, "and the Republicans-- including my opponent, Congressman Diaz-Balart-- responded by refusing to give it to him without strings attached that would advance their ideological agenda-- interfering with women's right to choice. Rubio was more eager to prevent infected women from getting abortions than in preventing more infections. This has got to stop. This attitude and this arrogance are a threat to the well-being of families here in South Florida. Career politicians seem to think they know more about this emergency than medical doctors and research scientists."

Both Florida doctors, Alina Valdes and Dena Grayson are on the Blue America Florida thermometer below. Their primary is August 30.

A Republican War On Science-- Whether Denying Climate Change Or The Zika Danger-- Is Actually A War On America

For nearly a decade now, the Republican Party in the House thought it would be funny to appoint anti-Science neanderthals to the House Science Committee. Boehner-- and now Ryan-- rush to put all the silliest morons who dumbbell voters send to the House onto the Committee, imbeciles and Science deniers like Mo Brooks (AL), Warren Davidson (OH), Barry Loudermilk (GA), Randy Neugebauer (TX), Steve Knight (CA), Brian Babin (TX), Bill Posey (FL)--the Obama-must-provide-his-birth-certificate guy who authored H.R. 5801, a bill to privatize asteroids for the mining companies-- Bruce Western (AR), Randy Weber (TX), GaryPalmer (AL), Ralph Abraham (LA), Barbara Comstock (VA), etc. When people say the GOP is the "stupid party," they routinely point to the House Science Committee as evidence. And the chairman-- someone who doesn't believe in Climate Change and who saw no need to vote to fund President Obama's proposals to combat the Zika Virus before is struck the U.S.-- is Texas blockhead Lamar Smith.

Fortunately, 2016 could finally be the year when an actual science believer knocks out ole Lamar. Tom Wakely is running a surprisingly strong grassroots campaign, despite a lack of support from the DCCC. This morning he told us that he's "spoken to several scientists over the course of this campaign, and they're all rightfully frustrated that we've come to a point where we're faced with the choice to 'believe' in science. We've seemingly exhausted or co-opted everything imaginable to become a political issue. Now these politicians have their sights set on the last bastion of objectivity. We're starting to reject the science that doesn't fit our ideology or narrative and we run the risk of becoming catastrophically regressive. This nation once held the belief that numbers, data, and the scientific method had no bias. If you didn't like the science, you could work the rest of your life to disprove it. These days, politicians work to convince their sector of the public that they know more than the experts. It's certainly disheartening, but it's not too late to fix it. My opponent, Lamar Smith, is now the tip of the iceberg of denial. He refuses to accept the reality facing us and does far more than turn a blind eye. He substitutes his own reality. One where the oil companies are eternal victims and where the scientists of our community are part of some liberal cabal hellbent on ruining society. There are a lot of aspects of Lamar Smith's job performance that I find particularly disqualifying, but his outright rejection of the objective and his harassment of those who are simply performing research rank damn near the top." Please consider helping Tom replace Lamar Smith in Texas by contributing to his campaign here.

Harold Feld is a senior vice president at Public Knowledge, which promotes freedom of expression, an open Internet, access to affordable communications tools and creative works and works to shape policy on behalf of the public interest. Recently, in a previously unpublished essay, Feld asked a simple and straight-forward question: What do we mean to believe in science?

This is becoming a very significant issue for progressives. And not simply in the hard sciences, but the social sciences as well.

Hard science and social science have always been critically important to advancing progressive policies. By contrast, we have pointed to the failure of science and pseudo-science as supporting racist policies, misogyny, or advancing pro-industrial policies. The environmental movement provides many examples where hard science was dismissed time and again until the weight of real scientific evidence became overwhelming. The same with consumer protection for carcinogens. And everyone should remember the value of the "Clark Experiment" as applied social science in Brown v. Board of education. By contrast, social theories justified with little evidence such as "broken windows policing" have caused immeasurable harm until debunked and disproven by rigorous social science research.

Which is why I am becoming very concerned that legitimate suspicion of self-interested research or agency capture is morphing in some cases to objection without substance.

Lamar Smith, Anti-Science Committee Chairman

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the field which causes the most concern for me on this is the deployment of wireless and new technologies. New technologies are an area where there is often a group of people who naturally reject them as dangerous and disruptive and a group of people who embrace them as wonderfully disruptive. Computers in classrooms and education, the impact of ubiquitous WiFi or other wireless technologies, naturally have had both advocates and skeptics.

But this is where science comes in. The properties of electromagnetic waves are reasonably well understood, if complicated sometimes to predict. So if we are asking a question "how do we know what prolonged exposure to radio frequency energy at certain power levels does?"

It's a fair question. We can start with what we know about the existing physics and biology. We can ask based on this knowledge what we might think would be potential negative impacts. We can run tests on these. We can also look over the long term to see if there appears to be some kind of correlation that cannot be explained by other means. We can test these statistical correlations in a variety of ways.

If the answer comes up with a set of conditions under which operation looks safe-- and not just "plausibly safe" but actually safe as in we don't see any evidence of a correlation with negative health effects-- then what?

If we believe in science, we go forward with deployment.

It's important to realize this isn't just about money, or toys, or other things that people who don't use this stuff understand every day. It's about life saving technologies in hospitals and elsewhere. It's about hearing aids that use Bluetooth. It's about creating economic opportunities for disadvantaged communities by providing access to affordable connectivity. It's about allowing communities to express themselves in their own voices. It's about being able to record what happens on the streets with a cell phone and have the ability to upload these images in realtime-- whether by licensed wireless or WiFi. It's about getting technology in schools so Girls Can Code and people of color can have access to the tools they need at an early enough age to feel as comfortable and at ease with them as wealthier or whiter communities. Not deploying these technologies, and not making them available to children where appropriate, has huge social cost, economic cost, and cost in lives.

Yes, there are lots of worries, and lots of pitfalls. There are lots of concerns about how these things are being implemented, and who benefits. We need to look at corporate generosity with enlightened skepticism, and know the right questions to ask about whether particular agendas are being furthered through deployment.

But we also need to remember we could not have had Ferguson without a ubiquitous wireless network. If we had simply decided not to trust the science on wireless saftey because Verizon and AT&T have economic interests and therefore we can't trust the FCC to do its job and therefore we can't really *know* if it is safe to deploy wireless technologies, then we would never had had all the very real social benefits that flow from the deployment of these technologies.

So we need to ask ourselves about the roll of progressives in fostering proper use of science and social science for a fair and just society. We cannot simply be suspects and nay sayers because of our skepticism about industry agendas and the possibility of government capture. We must be willing to address studies on the merits, to *show* where bad science or bad social science is leading to a bad set of policies. We need to do things like hold up the implicit (and explicit) biases in technological advances like Big Data. We need to ask hard questions about GMOs.

But if we *believe* in science, we can't just reject it when it conflicts with those things we find intuitively credible or where it fails to substantiate our suspicions and fears. As progressives, we need to be willing to hold other progressives accountable for baseless fear mongering and pseudo-science as we are critical of conservatives when they play similar games, or when they refuse to confront the scientific consensus.

I am deeply worried when we refuse to hold ourselves and others to these standards simply because the targets are major corporations and agencies that are often captured. If the science is really wrong, we can and should show it.

I do not want the Democratic Party to claim the mantle of "belief in science," and then use bad science to advance pro-corporate policies. I want progressives to embrace the mantle of believing in science, and modeling that behavior.

Tom Wakely, our aforementioned candidate from San Antonio (TX-21) running against House Science Chairman Smith added that "If enough objective data is presented to show I have nothing to fear-- I'd accept it. Science should have no political bias. That's how science works. It's what took us to the Moon and beyond. It's what ended epidemic after epidemic. As Republicans look to politicize Zika after refusing to adequately fund it (even according to Marco Rubio), I hope the country is able to look inward at the stranglehold some lobbyists and corporations have over our political process. Restoring scientific objectivity is paramount to our progress. We could accomplish so much together if we were all able to realize this. I'm up against the bought and sold. I'm fighting to restore progress."

And speaking of Rubio, on Saturday, sweaty little Marco started short circuiting again when asked about pregnant women's right to choice when they are infected with Zika, which, as everyone already knows, causes severe birth defects. "I understand a lot of people disagree with my view, but I believe that all human life is worthy of protection of our laws. And when you present it in the context of Zika or any prenatal condition, it’s a difficult question and a hard one. But if I’m going to err, I’m going to err on the side of life... Obviously, microcephaly is a terrible prenatal condition that kids are born with. And when they are, it’s a lifetime of difficulties. So I get it. I’m not pretending to you that that’s an easy question you asked me. But I’m pro life. And I’m strongly pro life. I believe all human life should be protected by our law, irrespective of the circumstances or condition of that life." He didn't say whether or not he also believes in Florida Governor Rick Scott slashing mosquito control funds by 40%.

If Rubio knows nothing at all about science or the scientific method, Florida has one of the world experts on virology running for Congress in Orlando, Dr. Dena Grayson. A progressive with both an MD and a Ph.D, she treated uninsured patients for free for nearly a decade, and she has spent years researching cures for deadly diseases, such as cancer, Ebola and Zika virus. If elected, Dr. Grayson would be the first ever M.D./Ph.d. to serve in Congress. She's considered an accomplished physician and medical researcher" and "one of the leading experts on viruses.” Her research on viruses has been published in some of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, including Nature.

"Health experts," she told us this morning, "have been warning us for months that it’s not 'if, it’s when' we would see the first case of a person infected by a mosquito in the U.S. We are literally in a race against time, and thanks to the utter aversion of science-phobic Republicans to spend money on anything other than walls, weapons, or war, our efforts to combat Zika virus are falling behind." She wants Central Florida residents to remember that since the Obama administration’s first request for funding-- and its rejection by House Republicans-- early this year, at least 15 babies have been born with devastating and irreversible brain damage, and 479 pregnant women in the U.S. have been infected with Zika virus. "Republicans," she said, "prefer to play petty politics and the blame game, rather than acknowledge the cold, hard facts that are staring them right in the face... The ongoing Zika virus outbreak has been unfolding since early this year in the U.S., and and even earlier than that in Central and South America. Democrats, of course, embrace science and quickly recognized the threat to public health. Back in February, the Obama administration asked Congress to approve $1.9 billion in funding to combat Zika virus. Republicans, in predictable fashion, balked at spending money on anything science-based. Since then, over 1,800 cases of Zika virus have been diagnosed in the U.S., but because 80% of infected individuals don't ever show symptoms, the actual number of people with Zika is likely closer to 7,200, according to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control)... Ominously, starting in late July, Zika virus is now being spread by mosquitoes in Florida, with at least 17 cases of 'mosquito-borne' infection already confirmed."

Like her husband, Alan Grayson, as well as Dr. Alina Valdes, Tim Canova and the other candidates you're find by clicking on the thermometer below, Dena is dedicated to bringing the Republicans along on public health threats so that they have a better understanding of the impact on real human beings of their ideological votes.