About Those Members Of Congress Trading On Insider Information...

Eggs seem mighty expensive lately, don't they? Profiteering under cover of a national emergency is a crime, isn't it? I believe prices are only allowed to go up 10% in a situation like the one we find ourselves in today. I don't think anyone is enforcing that. As for Congress... well, it's filled with scoundrels and thieves. And the White House... what can I say that hasn't already be said a million times over? We truly have let our democracy turn into a kakistocracy. WE did that.. And, no, I'm not just talking about ex-congressional crooks Duncan Hunter (R-CA) and Chris Collins (R-NY), both of whom have already been found guilty. I'm talking about the corona-crooks still in Congress-- and it goes beyond just Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), the most blatant of the criminals. The Charlotte Observer called on Burr to resign last week. There are a lot of other editorial boards around the country that should get busy as well.

In the Burr case, the editorial board wrote that "More than a week has passed since news reports revealed how U.S. Sen Richard Burr profited off the coronavirus while failing to warn his constituents at the early, critical stages of the crisis. Things are hardly getting rosier for North Carolina’s senior senator. Burr has been abandoned by fellow Republicans, some of whom have called for his resignation. He’s been sued by a shareholder of Wyndham Hotels & Suites for selling off $150,000 of that company’s stock. The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a statement that, while not using Burr’s name, warned members of Congress about doing what the senator is accused of doing-- trading off privileged information and briefings. And, on Monday, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department is investigating those stock trades. He is toxic to his party. He is embarrassing to North Carolina. Clearly, his problems are not going to go away. So why isn’t he?"

On Sunday, CNN reported that the Trumpist Justice Department "has started to probe a series of stock transactions made by lawmakers ahead of the sharp market downturn stemming from the spread of coronavirus, according to two people familiar with the matter. The inquiry, which is still in its early stages and being done in coordination with the Securities and Exchange Commission, has so far included outreach from the FBI to at least one lawmaker, Sen. Richard Burr, seeking information about the trades, according to one of the sources... Under insider trading laws, prosecutors would need to prove the lawmakers traded based on material non-public information they received in violation of a duty to keep it confidential."

Burr in the chair of the Senate Intel Committee, which was briefed on COVID-19 several times before it was seen as a pandemic and Burr ran out and sold about $1.6 million in hotel and airline stock-- and also warned wealthy North Carolina donors, though not the general public. Another one who smells at least as bad as Burr is billionaire Kelly Loeffler, a notorious slime bucket who bought her seat from Georgia's crooked governor last December. She and her scumbag husband, president of the New York Stock Exchange, sold a couple dozen stocks worth around $3 million dollars just before they crashed. Other senators being looked into are Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Jim Inhofe (R-OK).

Why do members of Congress keep committing crimes? That's an easy one. They invariably escape serious retribution which makes them willing to take risks. A couple of life sentences and it's unlikely that crooks like Burr and Inhofe would be going for a quick buck like that.

In an unrelated case, Open Secrets' Karl Evers-Hillstrom reported last week that the the Campaign Legal Center is asking ethics officials to investigate campaign spending by Steven Palazzo (R-MS) after the watchdog group found that he channeled six figures of donors’ money to family-owned businesses, not unlike what Duncan Hunter was nailed for. "Palazzo," wrote Evers-Hillstrom, "used campaign funds to pay over $60,000 in rent to his own farm between 2018 and 2019, according to Federal Election Commission filings. His campaign also spent nearly $128,000 with his now ex-wife’s accounting firm since 2011. Federal election law prohibits candidates from using campaign funds for personal use. But candidates can justify funneling donors’ money to themselves or family members if they make the case that the spending is campaign-related."

The Campaign Legal Center argues that Palazzo had an existing accounting firm and his campaign didn’t need the services of Palazzo & Co., which is run by his ex-wife. The two reportedly divorced in 2016, but much of that spending came when they were still married. The group also says Palazzo’s farm wasn’t critical to his campaign, as he reportedly sold it prior to his 2020 primary election, and that the payments would be “unusually high” for a campaign office.

“The lack of any publicly available information about the campaign using the farm as an office, the sale of the property prior to the primary campaign, and its remote location all suggest that the farm was completely for personal use and that it did not have any campaign purpose justifying $60,000 in rent,” lawyers for the Campaign Legal Center wrote in a letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics.

The Nature Of Conservatism-- Profiting From Societal Adversity

McConnell is a master of one thing and one thing only-- obstruction

I'm not going to argue about conservative, greed-obsessed businessmen rushing headlong into markets to profit from societal disruption. It's not illegal and anyone who ever thought a conservative had an predisposition towards ethical or Christian fundamental values was just kidding themselves anyway. My beef, though, is with conservative greed-obsessed elected officials. What I expect from private citizens of a conservative bent is not what I expect from conservative public officials. Nor should you. In two separate polls, a majority of North Carolina voters say Senator Richard Burr, who said in 2016 that he wouldn't run again, should resign for selling $1.6 million in hotel and other stocks based on inside information he obtained as chair of the Senate Intel Committee. He was only one of nearly a dozen conservatives in Congress who were doing the same thing-- selling stocks before the deluge-- although one, right-wing congressman Rob Wittman (R-VA) ran out as soon as he had some inside info and bought thousands of dollars of stock in AbbVie, Inc, which makes antiviral drugs. (His greed and lack of ethics, though, did him no good; he lost money too.) Robert Reich yesterday: Senators Loeffler and Burr-- and any other senator if found to have benefited from insider information about the pandemic, including Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)-- must resign immediately."

Last night the Washington Post reported that "Trump’s private business has shut down six of its top seven revenue-producing clubs and hotels because of restrictions meant to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, potentially depriving Trump’s company of millions of dollars in revenue. Those closures come as Trump is considering easing restrictions on movement sooner than federal public health experts recommend, in the name of reducing the virus’s economic damage." Trump had two reactions. First was to tell Mnuchin that a bailout for [his] hotels and golf courses had to be included in any stimulus package and second was that he's opening the economy again, no matter what it does to the efforts to flatten the curve and save lives.

And now Mitch McConnell is leading Senate Republicans to pass a stimulus package that serves their own partisan interests and the desires of the donor class while screwing over working families, the same way they did in 2008. Georgia Senate candidate TeresaTomlinson saw it the same way I did. Yesterday she sent her supporters a note that included this: "Now, amidst a global pandemic, Republican senators are committing insider trading while they try to score a $500 billion slush fund for a corporate bailout that would help their donors. The world’s challenges are too important to continue with failed Republican leadership. We have to defeat the Republicans this November to fix the Affordable Care Act, guarantee universal healthcare, and protect people-- not corporations-- from the coronavirus pandemic."

But wait! Won't Trump fix everything now that we're going from "It's a hoax" to resurrection Sunday in April?

Also Yesterday, Tom Neuburger pointed out the crossroads the country has come to: a collision between two competing imperatives-- "does the nation serve the pathological wants of the few who control it or the immediate and existential needs of the many who live in it?"

The few-- the bankers and profiteers; investors and CEOs of all kinds and stripes; their well-paid enablers in the media and professional classes-- think the coronavirus emergency will pass and "business" (our modern, rapacious way of doing it) will eventually return to normal.

Thus for them, the current crisis represents once-in-a-generation opportunity for theft on the grandest of scales, the plundering of public goods and control in the time of greatest emergency. They think this theft, like the many similar others that went before it, will occur with no consequence for them and only long-term consequences for others-- thefts like the 2000 election, which cost them nothing while adding to their power and credibility, but left a great many others broken or dead; or the theft of family fortunes and futures during the 2008 global meltdown, losses that even today only they have recovered from.

...[T]he massive loss of wealth by the working class after 2008-- wealth they have still not regained-- happened slowly, and in a nation filled with "back to normal" TV propaganda (you don't see the struggling depicted on spry network dramas and comedies) their constant pain has by now been normalized and accepted as just the way things are "for some people." (Those "some people," it must be noted, put Donald Trump in the White House.)

...On whose side will government throw its weight? On the side of the pathological few or the side of the suffering many?

The answer to that question will determine the future of the nation. Will we more resemble the country of FDR and his widely loved government for the people, or that of Louis XVI and his overthrown government of the people. A crossroads indeed. Will the national needs of the many be honored and met? Or will the pathological few light a flame that burns us all?

Now listen carefully to Senator Ed Markey (D-MA), a progressive, not a conservative. Ignore the imbecile talking head asking him questions, but listen to what he is prioritizing.





Crackpot Republicans in Ohio and Texas are breaking the law by using the pandemic as cover to prohibit all abortions. That's what conservatives have always done and will always do-- look for ways to push their toxic, anti-family agenda whenever they can take advantage of an opportunity, no matter how dire.

Today, Bernie, reacting to the decision by the Trump Regime's FDA to grant Gilead Sciences a seven-year monopoly for antiviral medication remdesivir for potential treatment of the coronavirus, said "It is truly outrageous that after taxpayers put tens of millions of dollars into developing remdesivir, Trump’s FDA is exploiting a law reserved for rare diseases to privatize a drug to treat a pandemic virus. The Trump Administration must rescind this corporate giveaway to Gilead and make any treatment and vaccine free for everybody. Now is not the time for profiteering in the pharmaceutical industry. Now is the time to bring our scientists together to develop and produce the best treatment for the coronavirus as quickly as possible. When Jonas Salk developed the polio vaccine 65 years ago, he understood the tremendous value it would have for all of humanity, and he refused to patent it. Right now, we must put human life above corporate profit. We cannot give pharmaceutical corporations a monopoly on treatments that could save millions of people during this crisis."

Insider Trading Senator, Richard Burr, Sold $150,000 Worth Of Shares In Wyndham Hotels Just Before It Lost Two-Thirds Of Its Value-- Smart Move... Also Criminal

I've been posting Chris Martenson's COVID-19 podcasts-- and urging readers to subscribe themselves-- since February. Because of his early warnings-- he's usually a week or two ahead of the government/media-- I was able to understand the need to liquidate substantial positions in stocks in my retirement account. But that's different from what Richard Burr (R-NC), Kelly Loeffler (R-GA), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) did. They were getting classified information that wasn't available to ordinary citizens-- although Intel Committee chair Burr did share the info with a handful of his top North Carolina supporters. And these senators bailed on stocks before the crash-- $1.6 million worth in Burr's case.

And at the same time they were selling stocks, the Republicans were publicly urging their constituents to just Trust Trump. The STOCK Act (Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge) prohibits members of Congress from doing exactly what these 5 senators did-- insider trading. Burr voted against passage of the STOCK Act in 2012-- one of only 3 senators to do so. As they always do, establishment media outlets are minimizing and tamping down the criminal actions these senators took. ProPublica isn't. They're doing the kind of reporting that corporate outlets like CBS News (video above) would never consider:

Soon after he offered public assurances that the government was ready to battle the coronavirus, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, sold off a significant percentage of his stocks, unloading between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions.

As the head of the intelligence committee, Burr, a North Carolina Republican, has access to the government’s most highly classified information about threats to America’s security. His committee was receiving daily coronavirus briefings around this time, according to a Reuters story.

A week after Burr’s sales, the stock market began a sharp decline and has lost about 30% since.

On Thursday, Burr came under fire after NPR obtained a secret recording from Feb. 27, in which the lawmaker gave a VIP group at an exclusive social club a much more dire preview of the economic impact of the coronavirus than what he had told the public.

“Senator Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S. and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak,” his spokesperson said. “As the situation continues to evolve daily, he has been deeply concerned by the steep and sudden toll this pandemic is taking on our economy.”

Burr is not a particularly wealthy member of the Senate: Roll Call estimated his net worth at $1.7 million in 2018, indicating that the February sales significantly shaped his financial fortunes and spared him from some of the pain that many Americans are now facing.

He was one of the authors of the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, which shapes the nation’s response to public health threats like the coronavirus. Burr’s office did not respond to requests for comment about what sort of briefing materials, if any, on the coronavirus threat Burr may have seen as chair of the intelligence committee before his selling spree.

According to the NPR report, Burr told attendees of the luncheon held at the Capitol Hill Club: “There’s one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history ... It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.”

He warned that companies might have to curtail their employees’ travel, that schools could close and that the military might be mobilized to compensate for overwhelmed hospitals.

The luncheon was organized by the Tar Heel Circle, a club for businesses and organizations in North Carolina that are charged up to $10,000 for membership and are promised “interaction with top leaders and staff from Congress, the administration, and the private sector.”

Burr’s public comments had been considerably less dire. In a Feb. 7 op-ed that he co-authored with another senator, he assured the public that “the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus.” He wrote, “No matter the outbreak or threat, Congress and the federal government have been vigilant in identifying gaps in its readiness efforts and improving its response capabilities.”

Members of Congress are required by law to disclose their securities transactions.

Burr was one of just three senators who in 2012 opposed the bill that explicitly barred lawmakers and their staff from using nonpublic information for trades and required regular disclosure of those trades. In opposing the bill, Burr argued at the time that insider trading laws already applied to members of Congress. President Barack Obama signed the bill, known as the STOCK Act, that year.

Stock transactions of lawmakers are reported in ranges. Burr’s Feb. 13 selling spree was his largest stock selling day of at least the past 14 months, according to a ProPublica review of Senate records. Unlike his typical disclosure reports, which are a mix of sales and purchases, all of the transactions were sales.

His biggest sales included companies that are among the most vulnerable to an economic slowdown. He dumped up to $150,000 worth of shares of Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, a chain based in the United States that has lost two-thirds of its value. And he sold up to $100,000 of shares of Extended Stay America, an economy hospitality chain. Shares of that company are now worth less than half of what they did at the time Burr sold.

The assets come from accounts that are held by Burr, belong to his spouse or are jointly held.

National emergencies, like the current pandemic, bring out the best in people-- but, apparently, also the worst. Note that all five senators are conservatives, who, ideologically, believe in a grasping me-first perspective. Conservatives shouldn't be serving in government. And when it really matters is in times like this. These 5 should all resign. They won't. Inhofe and Loeffler  are up for election this cycle. Inhofe is 100% safe, since he is an accurate reflection of his constituents, but Loeffler-- who was never elected to anything the first place and just bought the office from a crooked governor--  has a steep uphill climb to be returned to the Senate.Pressure is mounting-- including from Republicans-- on Burr to resign and wait for criminal prosecution. Even Tucker Carlson is talking about resignations:

As Though There Wasn't Enough Trump Regime Criminal Activity Being Exposed Now, Ted Lieu Is Onto Another Doozy!

Gangsta President by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, in response to a question I asked him about a letter he sent to the FBI, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Ted Lieu wrote this: "In my experience as a former prosecutor and later as a securities lawyer, there were multiple large trades on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that raised red flags. These trades occurred shortly before a major geopolitical event or statement by Donald Trump that moved the markets significantly. The resulting profits ranged from hundreds of millions to in some cases billions of dollars. Either these traders were all very lucky and everything was a coincidence, or there was insider trading occurring." This is the letter:

We write to urge you to investigate potentially unlawful behavior related to the trading of electronically traded futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in the last several months.

On October 16, Vanity Fair reported on numerous instances in which individuals or groups of individuals made millions, and in some cases billions, of dollars in profits by trading large numbers of Standard & Poor’s 500 (S&P) e-mini futures contracts immediately prior to major geopolitical events. In each of these instances, the e-mini contracts were traded within days, and often within hours, of the S&P rising or falling sharply. The trades preceded such events as the Saudi Aramco attack as well as announcements related to progress in talks between the United States and China over the trade war and the withdrawal of the extradition bill in Hong Kong. In one case occurring in August, the trader or traders made $1.5 billion when the S&P rose after President Trump lied about phone calls taking place between United States and Chinese officials.

While the aforementioned trades may be purely coincidental, their timing and scale raise serious suspicions about whether the traders received material nonpublic information that would affect the S&P and how they received such information. We urge you to swiftly investigate whether trading on insider information or any other fraudulent behavior occurred in relation to these trades.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to your response.

The first member of Congress to have endorsed Trump, Chris Collins (R-NY) just recently resigned from his western New York-based House seat and plead guilty to a large number of charges revolving around insider trading. It's not uncommon for Republicans. And anyone who imagined Trump hasn't been working those angles, must be very short-sighted and naive. Long before Putin put him into the White House, Trump was a criminal. He still is-- but more so.

The Vanity Fair piece he was referring to, There Is Definitely Hanky-Panky Going On: The Fantastically Profitable Mystery Of The Trump Chaos Trades was written by investigative journalist William Cohan. Short version amounts to the question Lieu wants answered: "The president’s talk can move markets-- and it’s made some futures traders billions. Did they know what he was going to say before he said it?

In the last 10 minutes of trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Friday, September 13, someone got very lucky. That’s when he or she, or a group of people, sold short 120,000 “S&P e-minis”-- electronically traded futures contracts linked to the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index-- when the index was trading around 3010. The time was 3:50 p.m. in New York; it was nearing midnight in Tehran. A few hours later, drones attacked a large swath of Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure, choking off production in the country and sending oil prices soaring. By the time the CME next opened, for pretrading on Sunday night, the S&P index had fallen 30 points, giving that very fortunate trader, or traders, a quick $180 million profit.

It was not an isolated occurrence. Three days earlier, in the last 10 minutes of trading, someone bought 82,000 S&P e-minis when the index was trading at 2969. That was nearly 4 a.m. on September 11 in Beijing, where a few hours later, the Chinese government announced that it would lift tariffs on a range of American-made products. As has been the typical reaction in the U.S. stock markets as the trade war with China chugs on without any perceptible logic, when the news about a potential resolution of it seems positive, stock markets go up, and when the news about the trade war appears negative, they go down.

The news was viewed positively. The S&P index moved swiftly on September 11 to 2996, up nearly 30 points. That same day, President Donald Trump said he would postpone tariffs on some Chinese goods, and the S&P index moved to 3016, or up 47 points since the fortunate person bought the 82,000 e-minis just before the market closed on September 10. Since a one-point movement, up or down, in an e-mini contract is worth $50, a 47-point movement up in a day was worth $2,350 per contract. If you were the lucky one who bought the 82,000 e-mini contracts, well, then you were sitting on a one-day profit of roughly $190 million.

A week earlier, three minutes before the CME closed on September 3, someone bought 55,000 e-mini contracts, with the index at about 2906. At around 9 p.m. in New York-- 9 a.m. in Hong Kong-- the market started moving and kept rallying for the next six hours or so, reaching 2936. Around 2 p.m. in Hong Kong-- 2 a.m. in New York—Carrie Lam, the Hong Kong leader, announced that she would be withdrawing the controversial extradition bill that had been roiling the city in protest for months. Whoever bought those e-mini contracts a few hours earlier made a killing: a cool $82.5 million profit.

But these wins were peanuts compared to the money made by a trader, or group of traders, who bought 420,000 September e-minis in the last 30 minutes of trading on June 28. That was some 40% of the day’s trading volume in September e-minis-- making it a trade that could not easily be ignored. By then, President Trump was already in Osaka, Japan-- 14 hours ahead of Chicago—and on his way to a roughly hour-long meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping as part of the G20 summit. On Saturday in Osaka, after the market had closed in Chicago, Trump emerged from his meeting with Xi and announced that the intermittent trade talks were “back on track.” The following week was a good one in the stock market, thanks to the Trump announcement. On Thursday, June 27, the S&P 500 index stood at about 2915; a week or so later, it was just below 3000, a gain of 84 points, or $4,200 per e-mini contract. Whoever bought the 420,000 e-minis on June 28 had made a handsome profit of nearly $1.8 billion.

Traders in the Chicago pits have been watching these kinds of wagers with an increasing mixture of shock and awe since the start of the Trump presidency. They are used to rapid fluctuations in the S&P 500 index; volatility is common, of course. But the precision and timing of these trades, and the vast amount of money being made as a result of them, make the traders wonder if all this is on the level. Are the people behind these trades incredibly lucky, or do they have access to information that other people don’t have about, say, Trump’s or Beijing’s latest thinking on the trade war or any other of a number of ways that Trump is able to move the markets through his tweeting or slips of the tongue? Essentially, do they have inside information?

Theoretically, market regulators are supposed to be keeping an eye on big trades such as these, to try to figure out whether they are just happy coincidences or whether there is something more nefarious afoot. And they say they do. But calls to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where the trades takes place, the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the equity markets, and to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates futures contracts, such as e-minis, were answered in different ways. Christopher Carofine, at the SEC, declined to comment. The CFTC did not respond to my inquiries, while a spokeswoman for the CME says the trades in question did not originate from a single source and they were of no concern.

There is no way for another trader, let alone an outsider such as me, to know who is making these trades. But regulators know or can find out. One longtime CME trader who has been watching with disgust says he’s never seen anything quite like these trades, not at least since al-Qaida cashed in before initiating the September 11 attacks. “There is definite hanky-panky going on, to the world’s financial markets’ detriment,” he says. “This is abysmal.”

In the case of Trump, market manipulation also yields political dividends. Perhaps the most obvious example dates to late August, when Trump, desperate to reignite trade talks with China, boasted during the G7 summit that his counterparts in Beijing had come back to the table. “We’ve gotten two calls-- very, very good calls,” he told reporters. “They mean business.” The market rose more than 900 points over the next few days. But a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry said he was not aware of any such calls. An editor at the Global Times, the state-controlled newspaper, tweeted that he knew of no calls made in the days leading up to the G7 meeting and that “China won’t cave to US pressure.” Two U.S government officials later told CNN that Trump misspoke and “conflated” comments from China’s Vice Premier Liu He with direct communication from the Chinese. According to CNN, the officials said Trump was “eager to project optimism that might boost markets.”

Indeed, this single Trump lie briefly inflated domestic markets by hundreds of billions of dollars. “What this describes is, quite literally, market manipulation that constitutes criminal violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934,” commented George Conway, the conservative attorney and Trump critic.

Whether Conway is right or wrong is a matter of legal opinion, but given how fishy and coincidental the trading in e-minis seems to be these days, the SEC or CFTC would be doing a great service (and their job) for the American people by investigating who is behind these lucrative trades, and what they knew before they placed them. At the moment, what we’re getting from them is an indifferent shrug.

Federal regulators might start here: In the last 10 minutes of trading on Friday, August 23, as the markets were roiling in the face of more bad trade news, someone bought 386,000 September e-minis. Three days later, Trump lied about getting a call from China to restart the trade talks, and the S&P 500 index shot up nearly 80 points. The potential profit on the trade was more than $1.5 billion.

Mike Siegel, was a City Attorney for Austin, whose job almost seemed to be coming to work everyday and suing Texas' governor. Now he's running for Congress in a seat held by one of the wealthiest men to ever serve in Congress, Michael McCaul. Earlier this morning he told me that he's "thankful Congressman Lieu is investigating these suspicious trades. Unfortunately, we have an Administration of grifters, and even this level of corruption seems possible." Former congressman Alan Grayson-- who was so outspoken and so courageous that Chuck Schumer still starts shaking, physically, when someone mentions his name-- backed that up: "Fortunately, this is not a crime that one can commit anonymously. For every trade, there is a clear “paper trail” of who ordered what, and when.  As to ‘why’-- well, that’s obvious."

New Jeff Merkley Bill Would Prevent Members Of Congress From Owning Stock In Companies Whose Value They Affect

When I met Jeff Merkley in 2007, he was Oegon's state House speaker and a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Gordon Smith. He was a working class guy seeking to join a millionaires club. As minority leader of the state legislature, he directed the successful Democratic drive to win the majority and was unanimously elected speaker in 2006. He ran as an unabashed progressive from day one and Blue America endorsed him. He's never disappointed us and has maintained an "A" rating from ProgressivePunch. This cycle, he and Elizabeth Warren are the only two members with perfect 100% crucial vote scores. In 2016, he was the only senator to endorse Bernie for president. This cycle, like several Bernie supporters, he is competing for early support towards winning the Democratic presidential nomination. I don't know if he'll stay in the race if Bernie decides to run. I feel like he would be tied with Elizabeth Warren as my second choice if Bernie doesn't run. You'll never find him on the list of the Worst Democrats Who Want To Be President.

On Thursday, Merkley penned an essay about a bill he and Sherrod Brown have introduced, the Ban Conflicted Trading Act, that would prohibit members of Congress from abusing their public positions for personal financial gain. Following congressional insider trading scandals in the last couple of years, involving Chris Collins (R-NY) and Tom Price (R-GA), Merkley's bill would ban legislators and top staffers from trading stocks while participating in decisions affecting their value. The next step would be to ban legislators from accepting contributions from companies or executives whose business comes before any committees they serve on, but that isn't a step Merkley and Brown have taken, at least not yet. Merkley:

The Ban Conflicted Trading Act follows two major congressional trading scandals in recent years.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Representative Chris Collins (R-NY) bought nearly $1 million in discounted shares from the Australian pharmaceutical company Innate Immunotherapeutics. Chris Collins sat on the company’s board, while he and his family members owned about 20%--  with a personal investment worth $720,000--  of the company. He sat on the Health Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce during that time. On August 8, 2018 Collins was arrested by the FBI, along with his son and son’s father-in-law, for wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, securities fraud, and lying to the FBI in connection with his activities related to Innate Immuno. Representatives Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Billy Long (R-MO), Mike Conaway (R-TX) and John Culberson (R-TX) also bought shares in Innate Immuno.

Meanwhile, in January 2017, it became apparent that then-Health and Human Service (HHS) Secretary nominee Tom Price (R-GA), who sat on the Ways and Means Committee and Health Subcommittee during his time in Congress, had made dozens of stock trades in the health industry over a multi-year period while also acting as a top health care policymaker. While legislating, he advocated for the interests of a company he was invested in, Amgen, without disclosing the conflict of interest. And less than a week after purchasing shares in Zimmer Biomet, a medical devices company, Price introduced legislation to delay a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid regulation until 2018--  a move that would protect the company’s finances. After introducing the act, Price’s reelection campaign received a donation from Zimmer Biomet’s PAC. In total, Price held stock in more than 40 companies that created conflicts of interest for his position as Secretary of HHS.

The Ban Conflicted Trading Act would prohibit members of Congress and senior congressional staff from buying or selling individual stocks and other investments while in office.

New members would be allowed to sell individual holdings within six months of being elected, and sitting members of Congress would be allowed to sell individual holdings within six months after enactment of the bill. Alternatively, members of Congress can choose to hold existing investments while in office-- with no option for trading until they leave office--  or transfer them to a blind trust. Members of Congress would still be allowed to hold widely-held investments, such as diversified mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.

In addition, the legislation would prohibit members of Congress from serving on any corporate boards while in office.

Draining The Trumpist Swamp-- Chris Collins

Chris Collins (R-NY) making headlines

Early this morning, western New York Congressman Chris Collins, who represents the Buffalo and Rochester suburbs in a safe (R+11) seat that Trump won 59.7-35.2%, was arrested by the FBI, along with his son Cameron and Cameron's father-in-law, Stephen Zarsky. This is the indictment.

Collins is a backbencher who doesn't make many waves... just does whatever leadership tells him to do-- except for two things:

1- he was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump
2- he's an insider trading crook who used his office to enrich himself and several of his cronies

The co-chair of the Battery Storage Caucus, he has one of the highest Trump affinity scores in Congress-- 98.9%. He made news after the 2016 election when Chris Cuomo asked him about Trump considering Mitt Romney to head the State Department, telling CNN viewers that "What do I know about Mitt Romney? I know that he's a self-serving egomaniac who puts himself first, who has a chip on his shoulder, and thinks that he should be president of the United States."

Other than that, his only real brush with fame was when he bought 4 million shares of an Australian company, Innate Immunotherapeutics, which made him the single largest shareholder. He also told Tom Price (R-GA) and others to buy shares (Price bought 400,000 shares, valued at around a quarter million dollars, and was eventually fired as Secretary if Health and Human Services for his role in the insider trading scam). Collins had used his office-- and non-public information about drug trials-- to benefit the company and drive up the stock price. In the end, Collins' insider info allowed him and his family to avoid $768,000 in stock losses, based on what he knew about how a new multiple sclerosis drug had failed a medical trial, which quickly caused the Innate stock price to drop 92% when they announced that publicly.

Even if Collins winds up on trial before November, this is unlikely to have much impact on his race against progressive Democrat Nate McMurray, a Grand Island town supervisor who has raised only $133,624 against Collins' $1,274,249. The district is just too red... or is it? Wasserman at the Cook Report, who's usually very slow and tepid about changing race ratings, immediately changed NY-27 from "solid Republican" to "likely Republican." And Paul Ryan, while not calling on him to resign, did kick him off the House Energy Committee. "While his guilt or innocence is a question for the courts to settle," said Ryan, "the allegations against Rep. Collins demand a prompt and thorough investigation by the House Ethics Committee." Let's see if McMurray can make this enough of an issue to win with.

Too Many Multimillionaires In Congress? How Many Are Too Many? How Rich Is Too Rich?

In 2014 the Center for Responsive Politics analyzed the personal financial disclosure data from 2012 of the 534 then-current members of Congress and found that, for the first time, more than half had an average net worth of $1 million or more: 268 to be exact, up from 257 the year earlier. All those rich people... do they understand what most Americans go through? Can they even begin to understand? The number of millionaires is probably closer to 300 now. And while over 50% of Congress are millionaires, only 4% of Americans are millionaires. Wow are they over-represented! And when you start talking about multimillionaires, it's even more out of whack!

Monday, David Hawkings did a column for Roll Call, Wealth of Congress: Richer Than Ever, but Mostly at the Very Top, which deals with not how many millionaires there are in Congress but about how multi, the millionaires in Congress are. "The people’s representatives," he began, "just keep getting richer, and doing so faster than the people represented. The cumulative net worth of senators and House members jumped by one-fifth in the two years before the start of this Congress, outperforming the typical American’s improved fortunes as well as the solid performance of investment markets during that time." And that inevitably leads to a discussion of "the financial disparity between those who try to govern and those who are governed."

Millionaire lawmakers have always been a part of the congressional story-- from the landed gentry who created and first populated the legislative branch, through the industrialists who wielded outsize influence in the Gilded Age, to the corporate bosses and old money heirs who larded the cloakrooms through the end of the Cold War.

What’s marked recent years, a time when wealth disparity has grown wider than ever in American history, is the arrival of so many of the superrich. For every 13 members, in fact, one may fairly be dubbed a “1 percenter,” the term of derision imposed by liberal groups on the richest 1 percent of Americans. Data from the Fed pegged the net worth threshold for these people at $10.4 million in 2016, a mark exceeded by 26 Republicans and 17 Democrats.

At the high end of that group are 10 House members and three senators worth more than $43 million, which the Fed calculates as the richest one-tenth of 1 percent of the population.

Two cents from Howie: only 2 can be termed even remotely "progressive," Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Jared Polis (New Dem-CO). Remotely. The rest are all Republicans or reactionary Democrats unsympathetic to the legitimate aspirations of working families. Yesterday's column in the same publication, using the same data, asked the question: Maybe They’re Too Rich for Congress? But mostly about the millionaires who are quitting Congress. Of the 44 current members who have announced they are voluntarily leaving, they account for nearly a third of the $2.43 billion in cumulative riches of the 115th Congress. The column doesn't real with all the multimillionaires remaining in Congress, but does touch on the plague of new ones trying to buy seats and join the other crooks.

A short detour: when Trump said he is so rich he didn't have to steal, that was a laugh. Generally speaking, the wealthier someone is, the more corrupt, greedy and unethical.

Of course, the departing lawmakers of this year will be replaced by the newcomers of 2019-- and several credible candidates for Congress look to have little trouble cracking the roster of richest members.

In Southern California, health insurance executive Andy Thorburn and Gil Cisneros, who won the state lottery eight years ago, are both in the hunt for the open 39th District House seat-- and each has filed candidate financial disclosure forms signaling a net worth above $50 million.

Lucas St. Claire, an heir to the Burt’s Bees “earth friendly” cosmetics fortune, is a top Democratic prospect in Maine’s 2nd District, and wine store magnate David Trone is back for another House run, this time in Maryland’s 6th District.

The Republican side features Senate candidates Mike Braun of Indiana, who’s worth at least $35 million after creating a successful truck parts and equipment company, and, of course, Mitt Romney, now of Utah, whose private equity fortune was calculated at $250 million when he ran for president six years ago.

And that barely even touches on the ranks of the vile self-funders. In California alone, as of December 31, 2017 (the last FEC reporting deadline), there were 13 self funders vying to buy seats in the House who have already gone beyond $150,000. Expect millions more before November, especially from Jacobs, Cisneros and Keirstead, three candidates with absolutely nothing to offer but their wealth, ruthless ambition and money-hungry consultants:

• Andy Thorburn (D-CA-39)- $2,335,900
• Gil Cisneros (D-CA-39)- $1,352,762
• Sara Jacobs (D-CA-49)- $1,074,151
• Harley Rouda (D-CA-48)- $730,500
• Paul Kerr (D-CA-49)- $712,728
• Omar Siddiqui (D-CA-48)- $458,498
• Ron Varasteh (D-CA-45)- $250,000
• Michael Kotick (D-CA-48)- $245,452
• Mai-Khanh Tran (D-CA-39)- $230,000
• Stelian Onufrei (R-CA-48)- $228,000
• Hans Keirstead (D-CA-48)- $220,400
• T.J. Cox (D-CA-10)- $215,500
• Sean Flynn (R-CA-31)- $177,059

Other crooked, swampy candidates running for House seats who have already spent over a million dollars of their own money:

• Kathaleen Wall (R-TX)- $2,733,802
• David Trone (D-MD)- $2,281,939
• Shiva Ayyadurai (R-MA)- $1,163,248
• Steven Lonegan (R-NJ)- $1,006,972

And let's not forget poor (rich) Dan Moody (R-GA), who made an idiot of himself by flushing away $3,053,120 of his own in a primary where he came in 4th with just 17,028 votes (8.8% of the total). Today a rich Tennessee businessman, Darrell Lynn (R) jumped into the open U.S .Senate race, saying he "can easily spend $5 million" from his own pocket on the campaign. Republicans love self-funders. Establishment Democrats have come around to seeing it the same way the Republicans do.

A little tangent: tell me, is this a coincidence or part of a culture of corruption that pervades the Trumpist swamp? Another way to ask the question is if our government of the multimillionaires and by the multimillionaires is also a government for the multimillionaires. Carl Icahn is a longtime Trump crony, a friend and a short-lived member of the Regime. Insider trading maybe? Icahn sold a $31.3 million stake in Manitowoc whose stock tanked by 6% right after Trumpanzee he would be slapping a 25% tariff on steel imports. steel tariffs announcement. When Icahn sold off his Manitowoc shares in mid-February, they were trading at around $33. Friday they were selling at around $26. I bet other investors wish they had the same access to info Icahn had.

A Competent DCCC-- Which Doesn't Exist-- Would Be Having A Field Day Rebuilding The Democratic Party Brand In Texas

Texas has been ignored by the DCCC for too long. I fear 2018 isn't going to change much either, despite rumblings of some early interest. Is the new DCCC regional Vice Chair even paying attention-- or just running for governor of Colorado? There are 10 Republicans worth challenging in Texas in a 2-cycle strategy that could lead to the end of the disgraceful political careers of Pete Sessions, Joe Barton, John Culberson, Mike McCaul, Lamar Smith, Pete Olson, Kenny Marchant, Will Hurd, Roger Williams and John Carter, each of whom-- for example-- just voted to strip 24 million Americans of health insurance.

One of the most obvious targets is TX-07 Rep., John Culberson, whose Harris County district has gone from red to purple without the DCCC having taken note until last year when Hillary-- who didn't campaign there or spend a nickel in the market-- beat Trump 48.5% to 47.1%. As usual, the DCCC had no candidate running against Culberson and he was reelected 143,542 (56.2%) to 111,991 (43.8%) over conservative Democrat James Cargas. Culberson spent $1,193,411, compared to Cargas' $62,159. (The DCCC spent zero.) Cargas is running again, but so are 5 other candidates: Jason Westin, Alex Triantaphyllis, Debra Kerner, Joshua Butler and Laura Moser.

Aside from all the bad policy emanating from Culberson, he's also caught up in an insider trading scandal that has begun rocking Congress and which could land him in prison instead of back on Capitol Hill.

Innate Immunotherapeutics, the tiny but controversial Australian biotech company with ties to Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY), has picked up another financial backer in Congress. On January 26, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) purchased Innate stock worth between $1,001-$15,000, making him the fifth current member of Congress to follow Rep. Collins in investing in the company.

The purchase on January 26, 2017 came at the height of scrutiny of trading in the company by former congressman and now-Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, though Rep. Culberson didn’t file the transaction report revealing the purchase with the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives until April 6, 2017.

In March, CREW reported that four other members of Congress – Mike Conaway (R-TX), Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Billy Long (R-MO), and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK)-- had purchased Innate stock after Secretary Price’s purchase drew attention following his nomination. One of those members, Rep. Conaway, made an Innate purchase on the same date as Rep. Culberson.

Unlike Rep. Culberson, however, Rep. Conaway quickly disclosed the purchase, notifying the Office of the Clerk of the House within days. It is unknown why Rep. Culberson waited so long to disclose his investment in Innate.

Rep. Culberson did not report the purchase until April 6, well outside the 30-day period in which members are required to inform the Office of the Clerk of the House of stock sales or purchases. The deadline is 45 days if the trade was made through a broker and the member learned of it later.

...Purchases of Innate’s stock have been a point of controversy ever since it was revealed that Secretary Price had purchased between $50,001 and $100,000 of it last August in what has been called a “sweetheart deal.” During his confirmation hearings, several senators questioned if he used non-public information to trade health-related stocks, a potential violation of the STOCK Act if he did. They also questioned Rep. Collins’ role in encouraging him to invest in the company. Initially, Secretary Price said that all of his trades were initiated and executed by a broker, but later admitted he decided to invest in Innate after discussing the company with Rep. Collins.

Rep. Collins, who is Innate’s largest shareholder and sits on the company’s board of directors, was overheard by reporters in January speaking loudly into his cellphone in the House lobby, bragging about how many “millionaires” he had made in his hometown of Buffalo in recent months. In addition, after investing in Innate, Rep. Collins took legislative steps that would help the company, including authoring a clause in the 21st Century Cures Act that would accelerate Food and Drug Administration approval of certain drugs, a provision that could benefit Innate in the future.

Culberson had also voted for the bill. The progressive Democrat likely to face off against Culberson in 2018, Jason Westin, told us that "Culberson needs to play by the same rules as the rest of us. He must explain his Innate Pharmaceuticals stock purchase:

1. Did he receive any insider information that prompted his and his four congressional colleagues purchase of this stock?
2. If no, what public information prompted their buying together?
3. Why did he fail to disclose this purchase by the House required deadline?
4. Has he failed to disclose other similar purchases in the past?"

The race to replace Lamar Smith in the gerrymandered 21st district (the Austin-San Antonio corridor) has an even more crowded primary field than the one to replace Culberson. A district where Berniecrat Tom Wakely beat the conservative Democratic establishment candidate in the 2016 primary and then went on to score better against Smith than any previous Democrat, now has a growing list of candidates, from Wakely (endorsed by Blue America again) on the left to DCCC-favored "ex"-Republican multimillionaire Joseph Kopser on the right. Others include Derrick Crowe, Chris Perri, Chad Kissinger, Elliott McFadden, and Rixi Melton.

Smith has been leading the Republican war against Science and, especially against Climate Science and against the EPA. This week, Austin's Statesman reported that it was Smith who laid the groundwork for Trump that led to the ouster of the EPA's science advisors.

America's worst

What Trump and Smith have in mind is replacing the scientist advisors (the Board of Scientific Counselors) with lobbyists and industry reps. "I really don't know what to say about Lamar Smith anymore," Wakely told us this morning. "He has repeatedly shown he just doesn't care what his constituents or for that matter what anyone says about him. He will be 70 years old this November and he is already telling people in the district he won't be running in 2018. I believe he plans to go out with a big bang, leaving a trail of destruction behind him. Destroy the EPA... who cares. This man has always been a conservative but he never was just plain crazy. But over the last decade or so his policy positions on pretty much everything have increasingly become more extreme, even dangerous. This hardening of policy is not rational. Something else is at play here. Maybe he just wants to cash in and the oil and gas companies would be more than happy to oblige. Or maybe it is as simple as advancing age. Some of us stay alert well into our 90's and beyond, while others start falling apart years earlier, I know, I have a brother who just turned sixty and he has Alzheimer. So, as far as Smith is concerned, there is nothing we can do about him or his policies right now. We have to just wait until he retires or is forced into retirement in 2018." The NY Times reported that an EPA spokesman claimed that the Regime "believes we should have people on this board who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community."

The move-- which has been criticized by government watchdog groups and associations of scientists-- is out of the playbook of U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, who represents parts of Central and South Austin and who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Smith told the American-Statesman that he supported the move by EPA administrator Scott Pruitt for “being proactive in addressing issues related to EPA’s science advisory bodies.”

“This decision increases transparency, reduces conflicts of interest, and ensures balance on expert panels,” he said, adding the EPA’s science advisory boards serve as “echo chambers to rubber stamp costly and burdensome regulations.”

The EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, which Smith co-sponsored and which passed the House in late March, bars anyone who has an ongoing research grant from the EPA to serve on the Science Advisory Board, another board that helps oversee work at the EPA, and prohibits board members from applying for grants for three years after they step down from the panel.

The upshot is that it would effectively prevent many scientific experts from serving on the oversight board.

“This valuable bill opens the door to increased outside input, wider expert opinions, and more balanced recommendations in EPA’s Science Advisory Board,” Smith said at the time of its passage in the House.

Smith has long vilified the EPA, accusing federal scientists of pushing an “extreme climate agenda.”

The American-Statesman reported in February that Smith has called far fewer scientists to testify before his committee than people associated with the types of industries the EPA is charged with regulating.

In February Smith convened a hearing called “Making EPA Great Again.”

“EPA has long been on a path of regulatory overreach, and the committee will use the tools necessary to put EPA back on track,” Smith said at the time.

Most scientists say emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases help trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, leading to a warming planet. Smith has told the American-Statesman in the past that evidence scientists provide is “wishy-washy.”

“Today, I was Trumped,” Robert Richardson, an ecological economist at Michigan State University, wrote on Twitter on Friday. “I have had the pleasure of serving on the EPA Board of Scientific Counselors, and my appointment was terminated today.”

Another Texas district the DCCC isn't looking at this cycle-- which means they're not even going to start a process to win it back in 2020-- is the 25th, represented by crooked Republican Roger Williams, currently being investigated by the House Ethics Committee for trying to pass legislation meant to enrich himself. The district , which Trump won with just 55.1%, begins up in Burleson south of Ft. Worth, and twists south into Travis County and Austin itself. So far the only Democrat in the race is self-described "fiscal conservative" Kathi Thomas, who Williams beat in 2016, 58.4% to 37.7%.

Mylan Didn’t Lower EpiPen Prices After All; They Just Appeared To

Senator Joe Manchin's daughter Heather Bresch, CEO of Mylan, and some of the work she's been doing. Note — the EpiPen price is actually around $640 at most pharmacies (source).

by Gaius Publius

These days have seen a number of stories about the Mylan EpiPen scandal, the essence of which is captured in the graphic at the top (note, though, that the graphic understates the EpiPen price; it's now around $640). Heather Bresch, Mylan's CEO, decided to increase corporate profit by increasing the price of a mature product, EpiPen, a device that delivers life-saving epinephrine to people who suffer life-threatening anaphylactic shock from allergic exposure to, for example, bee stings and peanuts. In the view of most observers, she did it simply because she could.

There's no economic reason for the price increases, any of them. Epinephrine (basically adrenalin) is not proprietary. As Dr. Lee Rogers notes in the first link below, "As a hormone, it's a product of nature and cannot be patented." And the delivery mechanism (the "pen") has been around since 1977. All of the R&D is done, and the medicine is cheap. All told, each EpiPen contains just one dollar worth of medicine. (And it seems the original EpiPen was at least partly developed with taxpayer money.)

Yet under Heather Bresch, Mylan has steadily raised the price from about $50, its price when Mylan acquired the 50-year-old product, to more than $600 — because they could. In 2009, the year Bresch became president, the price of the EpiPen was increased 19%, followed by 10% hikes each year from 2010 through 2013. Then:

After successfully pushing for legislation requiring all public schools to carry emergency epinephrine [devices], Mylan jacked up the price by 15 percent every other quarter from the end of 2013 to the second quarter of 2016 [emphasis mine].

And that's how the game is played.

A Shakedown Scheme with a Sidecar of Murder

As I noted here, this is basically a shakedown scheme with a sidecar of murder — "Got a peanut allergy? Pay my new price or the kid dies." In the meantime, corporate profit went through the roof, as did CEO compensation, as the graphic shows.

Dr. Lee Rogers, a medical doctor and a former progressive House candidate, broke the story here:

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin’s Daughter-- the Next Martin Shkreli

and DWT issued a follow-up story here:

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

Two side wrinkles and you're up to date:

First, CEO Bresch may have engaged in insider trading when she sold over 100,000 shares of Mylan stock in advance of the latest price increases. As noted in the second link above, the stock price fell drastically after Dr. Rogers' piece was published.

Second, Bresch has taken Mylan through a corporate "inversion," a scheme by which a U.S. company buys a foreign subsidiary, then becomes a foreign corporation, with nothing else changing but its U.S. tax status. LA Times reporter Michael Hiltzik has written a full report on Mylan's inversion here.

Shamed by the Scandal, Heather Bresch Pretended to Lower EpiPen's Price

Mylan's price-gouging on its EpiPen business is indeed a scandal, not just on the business pages because of the sudden stock decline, but in the larger press because of the "vulture CEO" angle. Even MSNBC, which tends to keep hands off of Democrats, covered it, and tagged Sen. Joe Manchin in the story. (For more on Manchin and his responsibility for his daughter's career, do read Dr. Rogers' well researched story. Manchin's been involved at almost every stage of it.)

As a result of the horrible press, Mylan responded. It was initially reported that Mylan would lower the price of its EpiPen package by 50% in response to public outrage. For example, from The Hill:

EpiPen maker lowers price after uproar

The maker of EpiPens announced Thursday that it is reducing the price of the device following an uproar in Washington over the cost of the treatment for serious allergic reactions.

Mylan, the company that makes EpiPen, said it will provide a savings card worth up to $300 for people who had been paying the full price out-of-pocket, effectively reducing the cost by 50 percent.

The company is also making it easier to qualify for its patient assistance program, which eliminates out-of-pocket costs for uninsured and underinsured people....

Mylan announced the changed a day after Hillary Clinton denounced the company for hiking the cost of EpiPens 400 percent in recent years. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill had also sounded the alarm, sending letters to the company and to the Food and Drug Administration pressing for answers.

Mylan also pointed to insurance companies in its Thursday statement, noting that higher deductibles have left patients picking up more of the cost of drugs like EpiPens.

I hope you noted that last sentence, in which Mylan says "higher deductibles have left patients picking up more of the cost of drugs like EpiPens." Remember, each EpiPen contains about $1 worth of medicine. Patients are actually picking up the cost of CEO Bresch's nearly 700% compensation increase.

But it didn't take long for that "50% reduction in cost" claim to be more carefully looked at. For example, from USuncut:

EpiPen did not actually lower their price — it’s just another Pharma scam

Mylan Pharmaceuticals is now running a slick PR campaign to try and convince Americans they lowered the price of the EpiPen. Don’t buy it.

On Thursday morning, it was widely reported that Mylan responded to consumer outrage by lowering the price of the drug by 50 percent. While that may be true on the surface, the company didn’t actually change the price at all. The drug company’s rollout of EpiPen price cuts only applies to uninsured and underinsured consumers, who are given a $300 savings card while still having to pay roughly $300 more for a [$640] package of two EpiPens.

The bottom line?

However, the market price of the EpiPen remains the same.

And that's how the game is played.

This is Heather Manchin Bresch, by the way, in case you see her on the street. I'm sure she'd be glad to explain the numerous price increases at length. Maybe there's a nuance she can point you to that I've missed.

Mylan CEO Heather Bresch (source; photo credit Joe Wojcik)

Or maybe not. This really is shakedown scheme, with a sidecar of "or your kid dies." Is predator too strong a word for this behavior? Or is predation just business as usual in drug company CEO suites and the DC political offices that take their money?

Hate the Drug Companies? Support California's Prop 61 Next November

If you think predator is not too strong a word for drug company "shakedown or death" profit schemes, consider supporting California's new Proposition 61, which will end Big Pharma's hold on unchecked and sky-high prices. Prop 61 is a serious attack on drug pricing, and it will work if it's passed. It will also appear in a number of other states if it's passed — hope for us all.

More on Prop 61 here.

GP