Bribes Don't Always Work-- Congress Just Slapped Down Big Tobacco

There's an infamous still photo at the 40 second mark in the video above. The photo is of the 7 CEOs of the 7 big tobacco companies-- collectively known as the "7 dwarves"-- swearing in front of Congress that tobacco was neither addictive nor harmful to anyone's health. Although the 7 absolutely knew otherwise and although the 7 were absolutely responsible for millions of deaths, none were ever charged with a crime, let alone incarcerated for a single day in prison. Zero accountability.

The tobacco companies have kept bribing members of Congress. This cycle the tobacco companies increased their bribery from $816,778 to $2,478,767, having given $1,838,353 to Republicans and $638,384 to Democrats. And the cycle has barely even begun! In the House, these were the biggest recipients of tobacco bribes:

• George Holding (R-NC)- $63,755
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $53,350
• Tom Cole (R-OK)- $40,065
• Mark Walker (R-NC)- $39,850
• Robert Aderholt (R-AL)- $36,000
• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- $34,800
• David Rouzer (R-NC)- $34,100
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $32,500
• Richard Hudson (R-NC)- $28,200
• Ted Budd (R-NC)- $27,450
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- $25,200
• Andy Barr (R-KY)- $24,550

Aside from Bishop, other notorious Democratic crooks who took over $10,000 from Big Tobacco last cycle were James Clyburn (SC- $17,500), Henry Cuellar (TX-$17,500), Cedric Richmond (LA-$16,082), Richard Neal (MA-$12,700) and, of course, Steny Hoyer (MD-$12,500).

So why all the bribes? Well, Big Tobacco wanted something from Congress, something that would boost their profits drastically-- even if it meant exposing millions more young Americans to lung cancer, liver cancer, COPD, heart disease, emphysema, diabetes, tuberculosis and... on average a 10 year decrease in life expectancy.

But Congress took that into consideration-- as well as the fact that medical care for smoking-related disease costs the country $289 BILLION a year. Every year. Remember that shitty budget that Congress passed last week? It includes something the Tobacco Industry fought-- and lost-- raising the smoke age from 18 to 21 starting next summer.

That provision, part of a spending bill that must still be signed into law by President Donald Trump, would apply not only to traditional tobacco products such as cigarettes and cigars, but also to e-cigarettes-- products that have lately been caught in regulatory cross-hairs, sparked by rising rates of use among teenagers. According to the latest federal data, 27.5% of high school students reported using e-cigarettes during the past month. Raising the legal age of purchase is meant in part to curb that trend by preventing teenagers from buying vaping products, either for personal use or to distribute to younger classmates.

...Public health officials support ["Tobacco 21" legislation] on the premise that it would theoretically keep tobacco products away from young people—which is especially important since most smokers start before they’re 21. In a statement provided to TIME, the American Lung Association called it an “easy way to protect children’s health and prevent future generations from getting hooked on nicotine.”

Vaping advocates, meanwhile, support Tobacco 21 for several reasons. Tony Abboud, executive director of the trade group Vapor Technology Association, said in a statement provided to TIME that Tobacco 21 is “the most significant step that can be taken to reduce youth access and use.” By keeping nicotine products away from young users, for whom they are not intended, Tobacco 21 could also ease some of the hysteria around teen vaping. Further, it could preempt more dramatic proposals, like the all-out ban on flavored vaping products that Trump teased this fall-- and then abandoned in favor of Tobacco 21.

Longer-term, it brings much-needed regulation to an industry that has proliferated largely unchecked. E-cigarettes were not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until 2016, so any brand for sale before then entered the market without agency approval. By the time the FDA started cracking down on vaping companies for their marketing or for producing kid-friendly flavors like cotton candy around 2018, an underage-use epidemic had already started. Reigning in the wild west of the vaping industry through legislation like Tobacco 21 could enhance the industry’s legitimacy and give it a better shot at surviving when the FDA decides next spring whether to pull e-cigarettes off the market entirely.

Of course, losing an undeniably lucrative customer base-- teenagers-- will have some negative effect on vaping companies’ bottom lines. But David Levy, who researches the science and business of e-cigarettes at Georgetown University, says companies will likely come out fairly unscathed. “While sales would be reduced, firms selling vaping devices and liquids will probably indirectly benefit, because regulations will be less strict due to less concern about youth vaping,” Levy says.

The policy could also have an outsized benefit for companies like market-leader Juul Labs, and large competitors like Vuse. Juul, a lucrative startup backed by Big Tobacco firm Altria and valued at around $16 billion, can survive the hit that will come from shrinking its pool of legal buyers; Vuse, though less dominant, is also owned by a deep-pocketed Big Tobacco giant, R.J. Reynolds. But small mom-and-pop operations may not be able to, and some could fold. If they do, that means more market share available for the taking for Juul—which, even now, controls up to 70% of the U.S. market.

But the entire vapor industry, Juul included, has been struggling as vaping comes under greater scrutiny, thanks in part to a Congressional investigation and a vaping-related lung disease outbreak (mostly tied to THC, not nicotine). Juul’s valuation, while still massive, has fallen drastically since it peaked at $38 billion this time last year, and the company has been forced to navigate a steady stream of lawsuits and PR battles. (Juul did not respond to TIME’s request for comment.)

With FDA approval applications due in about six months and the federal government stepping in to regulate, the fate of the industry is far from decided.

What do you think-- had the 7 dwarves been thrown in the slammer after lying to Congress, would Big Tobacco still be bribing Congress? Hey! Maybe that's why Congress didn't try punishing them! Duh!

Tobacco Doesn't Pay McTurtle Enough Anymore For Him To Keep Turning America Into An Ashtray

Big Tobacco was once a much bigger player in congressional politics than it is now. As recently as 1990, the sector was handing out hefty bribes on a bipartisan basis. That year the tobacco companies gave $1,139,125 to Reoublicans and $1,012,249 to Democrats.That year the two top tobacco bribe takers were Senators Mitch McConnell ($60,650) and Jesse Helms ($57,280). Of the top 120 House members gobbling up money that allowed Big Tobacco to continue causing a cancer epidemic only ONE is still in the House: the stinking of corruption Majority Leader Steny Hoyer ($6,450).

Almost 2 decades later and it's a different picture. Now over half the Tobacco bribes go to Republicans. In 2018, they gave Republican campaigns $1,667,780 and Democrats just $628,839. In the House all their top bribery recipients were Republicans until you got down to the 12th biggest sleaze-ball, Kyrsten Sinema. So for last cycle only, here's the who's who whores of Big Tobacco in the House:

• George Holding (R-NC)- $57,755
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $48,350
• Tom Cole (R-OK)- $32,565
• Mark Walker (R-NC)- $30,100
• Robert Anderholt (R-AL)- $30,000
• Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)- $28,821
• Kevin Yoder (R-KS)- $28,773
• David Rouzer (R-NC)- $28,100
• Steve Scalise (R-LA)- $27,805
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $27,500
• Pete Sessions (R-TX)- $26,850
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog-AZ)- $26,800

The only other Democrats willing to inflict cancer-for-cash on their constituents by taking big Tobacco bribes were Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX), Cedric Richmond (New Dem-LA), James Clyburn (D-SC), Richard Neal (D-MA), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Scott Peters (New Dem-CA), Val Demings (New Dem-FL), Don McEachin (New Dem-VA), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Lou Correa (Blue Dog-CA), Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA), Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS). No other Democrats took over $6,000.

In the Senate, these were the 10 top players tobacco bribees:

• Tim Kaine (D-VA)- $63,963
• Thom Tillis (R-NC)- $57,850
• Mark Warner (R-VA)- $41,650
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)- $34,600
• Bill Nelson (D-FL)- $28,705
• Marco Rubio (R-FL)- $24,500
• Joe Manchin (D-WV)- $23,042
• Bob Casey (D-PA)- $20,095
• Luther Strange (R-AL)- $19,000
• Jon Tester (D-MT)- $16,950

Raise your hand if you notice a correlation between corruption and conservative politicians. In terms of the whole period from 1990 to 2018 the half dozen biggest recipients of Tobacco bribes still in the House today:

• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $190,850- $190,850
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- $179,800
• James Clyburn (D-SC)- $163,700
• Hal Rogers (R-KY)- $154,802
• George Holding (R-NC)- $153,782
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- $143,400

And in the Senate, the big 6:

• Richard Burr (R-NC)- $695,185

• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)- $640,075

• Mark Warner (D-VA)- $270,167
• Mitt Romney (R-UT)- $194,766
• Lamar Alexander (R-TN)- $157,700
• Roy Blunt (R-MO)- $146,257

If you read Alex Pareene's exhaustive piece on McTurtle in the New Republic last month, Nihilist In Chief, you already know that McConnell stands for nothing at all other than money. That's it-- just money. Nothing but money. That's who he is; what he is. Big Tobacco's not as big as it once was. So... time to throw them overboard. Yesterday, Burgess Everett reported for Politico, that McTurtle is running around saying raising the age to 21 for tobacco buyers is now a "top priority." He's even going to introduce the bill himself when they get back from spring break. There's no doubt that this wasn't polled and focus-group-tested back in Kentucky where he will face the voters next year. In fact, his move comes one day after he announced his reelection campaign and shows the changing politics of tobacco. While tobacco has long been a key industry in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell said he wants to change the law to discourage vaping and teenage nicotine addiction and improve Kentucky’s public health."

“Their vaping products … these young people may not know what chemicals they are putting in their bodies,” McConnell said in Louisville, Ky. “Far too often, 18-year-olds in high school can legally buy vaping devices and share them with their classmates.”

The move shows a tack toward pragmatic legislating for McConnell, who as Senate leader has primarily focused on confirming President Donald Trump’s nominees in recent weeks. But he said he will move to fast-track his new proposal, which mimics new state laws across the country that raise the tobacco purchasing age, and said his bill is part of moving the Bluegrass State away from the “tobacco culture” on which it was “so dependent, for so long.”

“I hope and expect this legislation to get strong bipartisan support in the Senate. As you know, I’m in a particularly good position to enact legislation and this will be a top priority,” McConnell said.

The GOP leader also said there will be an exception for members of the military.

That's sweet, but Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Donna Shalala (D-FL) beat him to it on Tuesday with their Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act on Tuesday, which raises the age to purchase tobacco products to 21. Also on Tuesday, PBS did a story on the culpability of Big Tobacco in the ruination of health from a social perspective. "For state Medicaid plans, though, which pay a heavy price for tobacco-related illnesses, [tax day] can be a shot in the arm of sorts," wrote Charles Betley. "April 15 is also the day when the five largest tobacco companies pay $9 billion dollars to state governments, each and every year, forever, because of a 1998 legal settlement meant to compensate states for the costs of tobacco-related illness such as cancer, emphysema and heart disease. Actual payments made by the tobacco companies vary year to year because of adjustment factors written into the settlement; each of the states’ payments varies as well. Payments from tobacco companies, as well as tobacco taxes, help to support health care and other services for low-income people served by state Medicaid programs. Even though the federal government supports each state’s Medicaid program by paying at least half the costs, many states have difficulty finding revenues to pay the remaining share."

Call me crazy, but I always thought that it shouldn't just be tobacco companies' shareholders paying for this. They should pay plenty, of course. But senior management at these companies should be held personally liable as well-- especially since they all knew and covered it up for so many years-- and the politicians, like McConnell, who took so much in bribes to help with the coverup. Call me crazy.

All the Big Tobacco executives lied to Congress, under oath. So why didn't any of them go to prison?

Determining how much tobacco use costs states’ Medicaid programs puts the payments from tobacco companies into perspective. One estimate found 15% of nationwide Medicaid costs were caused by tobacco use. But such estimates based on national surveys may not account for which tobacco-related diseases are most prevalent in a particular state. How many of the state’s Medicaid participants smoke, and how hospitals and doctors are paid, also affect a state’s Medicaid costs.

...[W]e estimated that the cost of tobacco-related illness to Mississippi Medicaid was $388 million in 2016 and $396 million in 2017. This made up about 9% of Mississippi’s annual spending on Medicaid. Our estimates were somewhat lower than the national cost estimates of 15%. We believe this is because Mississippi Medicaid covers large numbers of children and younger adults-- a tobacco-related disease may appear only after many years of smoking.

Many Mississippi Medicaid participants may still be too young to be diagnosed with tobacco-related illnesses. Furthermore, our estimates only included diseases with measures of increased risks because of smoking that are presented in the medical literature or the 2014 surgeon general’s report. So, our estimates are relatively conservative.

We believe our study results will help policymakers in Mississippi assess the benefits of policies affecting tobacco. These could include increasing tobacco cessation services, raising the minimum age for buying tobacco products, raising taxes on tobacco products and requiring smoke-free public places. Our approach to estimating costs could also be used by other states to conduct their own analyses of tobacco-related costs to Medicaid to inform their policy choices.

Hard To Imagine A GOP Leader Getting Caught In A Bribery Scandal And Responding That The Practice Must Stop? Watch The Video

John Boehner took immense sums of money from Big Tobacco over the course of his slimy career-- not just the $464,312 in direct bribes from the industry but far more from them to help him build power by writing checks at his direction to other House Republicans. In the video above 60 Minutes explored the time Boehner got caught handing out tobacco bribes to other members. He never went to prison for his role; instead he was elected Speaker.

If you think Big Tobacco ran off with its tail between its legs after it was proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the industry was deceiving consumers about the health dangers from tobacco, you'd be wrong. Just last year Big Tobacco spent $19,886,360 on lobbying Congress and spent another $2,501,905 on bribing congressmembers. Since 1990 Big Tobacco has spent $39,726,110 on direct congressional bribes-- $26,795,799 to Republicans and $12,502,862 to corrupt conservative Democrats from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party. Among current members of Congress, the dozen biggest recipients of Tobacco blood money:

• Richard Burr (R-NC)- $689,460
• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)- $553,875
• Mark Warner (D-VA)- $228,517
• Walter Jones (R-NC)- $185,375
• John McCain (R-AZ)- $167,682
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)- $160,100
• Lamar Alexander (R-TN)- $156,700
• Jim Clyburn (D-SC)- $153,200
• Hal Rogers (R-KY)- $151,802
• Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)- $142,500

This last cycle the biggest crooks were Burr again ($192,225) plus Paul Ryan ($70,933), Kevin McCarthy ($69,000), Marco Rubio ($54,660) and slimy North Carolina GOP Congressman George Holding ($47,600). Last week Open Secrets used Bug Tobacco as an example of how big money influences policy detrimental to Americans and at odds with what they want from Congress.

This week, the Justice Department moved to delay enforcement of rules the FDA finalized a year ago dealing with tobacco products like e-cigarettes, cigars and hookah tobacco.

It’s been a busy time for big tobacco, as the victory came on the heels of a defeat for vaping (e-cigarette) companies: Sunday night’s omnibus budget bill reportedly did not include the proposed Cole-Bishop Amendment, which would have eased FDA regulations on e-cigarettes.

“Congress delivered a victory for kids and public health by rejecting the Cole-Bishop Amendment and other proposals to weaken FDA oversight of e-cigarettes and cigars,” wrote Becky Wexler, a spokesperson for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, in an emailed statement. But Justice’s move for a delay in the rules’ enforcement, she wrote, is potentially dangerous. “The FDA made an overwhelming case for why these products need to be regulated when it issued its final rule last year, and no new facts have emerged to change that.”

Reps. Tom Cole (R-OK) and Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA) have also introduced a stand-alone bill, the FDA Deeming Authority Clarification Act of 2017, with the same aims as the amendment. Arguing for the bill, Bishop and Cole have repeated a common talking point of proponents of vaping: That it helps wean smokers off cigarettes.

Unmentioned was the fact that Cole ended the 2016 cycle at No. 10 among the tobacco industry‘s top recipients of campaign contributions, having raked in more than $33,000. Bishop received about half that, $16,000.

...Nine of the industry’s top 10 congressional recipients in the 2016 cycle were Republicans-- and 83 percent of its contributions to candidates and party committees went to the GOP. In fact, the majority of tobacco contributions have consistently gone to Republicans since 1992. Favored Democrats have tended to be those from tobacco country, like Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner-- they received about $31,000 and $26,900 in the 2016 cycle, respectively-- who both represent Virginia, a premier tobacco-producing state.

Big Tobacco was only modestly on-board with the Trump campaign. Altria Group and Reynolds American, the nation’s largest and second-largest producers of tobacco products, together gave the campaign less than $4,000. They must have had a change of heart after Election Day, though. For Trump’s January inauguration, Reynolds donated a cool $1 million through a subsidiary, while Altria coughed up $500,000.

And the industry has other ties to the new administration: Prior to serving as acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, Chad Readler represented R.J. Renyolds while working at the law firm Jones Day; and FDA boss Scott Gottlieb used to be on the board of Kure, a vaping company.

Perhaps sensing opportunity, the industry stepped up its lobbying efforts in the first quarter of 2017, spending more than $4.9 million, up about 9.3 percent from the same period in 2016. Altria has already poured $2.3 million into lobbying, and Philip Morris nearly $1.3 million. Both companies have e-cigarette outfits in addition to their more traditional fare; Altria has lobbied on Cole and Bishop’s bill, and Philip Morris on “modified risk” tobacco products-- an FDA designation, rooted in the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009, that could benefit the marketing of vaping offerings, but has yet to be granted to any products. The industry’s lobbying outlays have been relatively modest since it spent nearly $73 million in 1998, the year the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement was entered. As part of the massive settlement, which regulated how cigarettes are sold and marketed, top cigarette manufacturers agreed to pay 46 states in connection to the costs of treating tobacco-related illnesses.

The era of vaping, like the settlement, has called the tobacco industry’s reputation into question. In 2015, the CDC revealed some startling findings: From 2013 to 2014, e-cigarette use by middle and high school students tripled, and hookah smoking approximately doubled. Kids are smoking both e-cigarettes and hookah at increased rates-- though the degree to which that is tied to the availability of flavors like gummy bears is difficult to prove definitively.

Still, if ever there was a time for the industry to feel optimistic about getting some relief in Washington, this would seem to be it, with control of both Congress and the White House in GOP hands. The Justice Department’s stalling of FDA tobacco product regulations may be a sign of more good things to come-- as far as big tobacco is concerned.

“[O]ur hope is that the Trump administration dismantles this rule, as it is utterly unworkable in its current form,” wrote Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, which describes itself as a public health advocacy group, in an emailed statement. He added that it was unclear whether the measure was being re-evaluated or the administration was simply understaffed and needed more time.

But lest vaping supporters feel doubtful about their chances on the Hill, there’s another piece of legislation on the table (along with Cole and Bishop’s bill). Last week, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) introduced the Cigarette Smoking Reduction and Electronic Vapor Alternatives Act of 2017, a bill that would relax the FDA’s approval process for e-cigarettes.

Hunter received more than $16,500 from tobacco PACs in the 2016 cycle.

Duncan Hunter is currently the target of at least one major ethics investigation related to criminal use of campaign funds and bribery from other big corporate donors. But Congress gets to define bribery in a way that generally excludes their own behavior. Otherwise, more than half the members of Congress would be in prison.

Why Is Obama Protecting The Tobacco Companies' Deadly Profits?

A deal with Obama?

I'm just back from my little Tuscan summer adventure. I rented a house in the countryside, near the small town of Montespertoli in the Chianti region, with some friends. It wasn't my first time in Italy. I used to live in Innsbruck, Austria, one of the planet's most boring towns, and I would escape through the Brenner Pass down into Italy at every opportunity. Years later, my company had an office in Milan and I rarely ever missed a chance to go visit. I've also made a point of spending a month in Rome, a month in Sicily and plenty of time in Venice and Tuscany over the years. One thing that I'll always remember about Italy is that even when other European countries started cutting back on smoking, the Italians were still puffing away. On this trip I don't recall ever seeing someone smoking. In fact, one of my friends. Mieke, who lives in Amsterdam and was part of this trip, was a chain smoker who I don't recall ever seeing without a cigarette-- until this trip. I never saw her light up once. The world is a better place and fewer people are getting tobacco-related diseases.

But American tobacco giants still see overseas markets as an opportunity to spread disease and death for profit-- with impunity. Republicans have traditionally made certain they could do that-- with impunity. But Friday Mayor Michael Bloomberg took to the pages of the NY Times to accuse President Obama of taking on the function for the GOP. Profits for tobacco giants, death and disease around the world courtesy of America.

Last year I endorsed President Obama for re-election largely because of his commitment to putting science and public health before politics. But now the Obama administration appears to be on the verge of bowing to pressure from a powerful special-interest group, the tobacco industry, in a move that would be a colossal public health mistake and potentially contribute to the deaths of tens of millions of people around the world.

Although the president’s signature domestic issue has been health-care reform, his legacy on public health will be severely tarnished-- at a terrible cost to the poor in the developing world-- unless his administration reverses course on this issue.

Today in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, representatives from the United States and 11 other nations begin the latest round of negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multinational trade agreement. The pact is intended to lower tariffs and other barriers to commerce, a vitally important economic goal. But if it is achieved at the expense of people’s health, the United States and countries around the world will be worse off for it.

The early drafts of the agreement included a “safe harbor” provision protecting nations that have adopted regulations on tobacco-- like package warnings and advertising and marketing restrictions-- because of “the unique status of tobacco products from a health and regulatory perspective.” This provision would have prevented the tobacco industry from interfering with governments’ sovereign right to protect public health through tobacco control laws.

Countries (and cities) that have adopted such regulations have had great success reducing smoking rates and saving lives. In New York City, where we have adopted some of the most comprehensive tobacco policies in the world, the smoking rate among adults has fallen by nearly one-third, and among high school students it has been cut in half. This progress helped to increase average life expectancy: in 2010, it was 80.9 years in the city, more than two years longer than in the country as a whole.

This week, however, the Obama administration bowed to pressure from the tobacco industry and dumped the safe harbor provision from the trade compact. The tobacco industry was joined by other business interest groups that were fearful that the safe harbor provision would lead to other products’ being singled out in future trade accords.

So instead of the safe harbor, the Obama administration is now calling for a clause requiring that before a government can challenge another’s tobacco regulation under the treaty, their health authorities must “discuss the measure.” The administration will also try to ensure that a general exception for matters to protect human life or health (typical in trade agreements) applies specifically to tobacco regulation.

But these are weak half-measures at best that will not protect American law-- and the laws of other countries-- from being usurped by the tobacco industry, which is increasingly using trade and investment agreements to challenge domestic tobacco control measures.

If the Obama administration’s policy reversal is allowed to stand, not only will cigarettes be cheaper for the 800 million people in the countries affected by the trade pact, but multinational tobacco corporations will be able to challenge those governments-- including America’s-- for implementing lifesaving public health policies. This would not only put our tobacco-control regulations in peril, but also create a chilling effect that would prevent further action, which is desperately needed.

Tobacco use causes more deaths around the world than HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. If nothing is done, one billion people will die of tobacco use by the end of this century. Through my philanthropy, I have supported grass-roots efforts overseas to discourage tobacco use. Bangladesh, for instance, has enacted new rules that are a big step toward banning smoking in public places and on all modes of transportation. In Vietnam, we helped build public support for comprehensive new legislation that includes some of the most effective tobacco-control techniques, like advertising bans and graphic warning labels on packages.

But if the trade pact proceeds without the safe harbor provision, this progress will be jeopardized, a devastating setback for the global effort to reduce tobacco use, particularly because the signatories to the trade pact include nations-- like the United States, Australia and Vietnam-- that have some of the world’s strongest tobacco control measures. If the Obama administration caves, the tobacco rules of its own Food and Drug Administration will be subject to challenge.

Last year Big Tobacco spent $2,837,315 in campaign contributions in congressional races. In the House, $1,430,921 went to 182 Republicans and $352,750 went to 67 conservative Democrats. These were the dozen worst Tobacco whores in the House, none of whom support any of Obama's policies ever:

Tobacco Industry Lobbyists And P.R. Hacks Reinvented The Tea Party-- All They Needed Were Some Angry, Lo-Info Kooks Willing To Wear "Attention-Drawing Accouterments"

Howie with a crackpot happily wearing attention-drawing accouterments, Pasadena, 2009 

Many Republicans will tell you former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) invented the TEA Party-- Taxed Enough Already-- to help popularize the Republican scheme to eliminate progressive taxation, which they feel puts too much burden on the wealthy-- and replace it with a flat tax that would force the burden down the income scale. But, as Lee Fang points out in his new book, The Machine-- A Field Guide To The Resurgent Right, that's not exactly what happened. The tobacco industry's expensive p.r. firms and lobbyists came up with the idea, fumbled it and watched Armey grab the ball and run with it. It was never grassroots at any time, though-- and always strictly astroturf.

[T]he roots of the modern antigovernment, antitax Tea Party can be traced to carefully formulated plans concocted by the tobacco industry. In the late eighties and throughout the nineties, the tobacco industry faced an assault from all sides. Legislators, litigators, and ballot initiatives alike sought to prohibit tobacco advertising to children, ban indoor smoking, tax tobacco products, place warning labels on tobacco products, and fine the industry for intentionally misleading consumers about the health effects of its products. The tobacco industry’s efforts to win the battle of public opinion by funding fake citizens’ groups sympathetic to the tobacco industry, such as “smokers’ rights” leagues, are well documented. It has also been reported that the industry made huge investments in conservative think tanks and bought off academics to produce junk studies casting doubt on the health effects of smoking. A less well-known tactic, however, was the attempt to create a “Tea Party” movement against government as a shield to protect the tobacco industry. Tobacco lobbyists, needing to win over public opinion-- and perhaps inspired by antitax political operatives like Norquist, who was on the tobacco industry payroll-- thought they could instigate a backlash against government regulation and taxes, and in doing so, stop government and consumer intrusion into the tobacco industry’s business.

Memos from the American Tobacco Company, Philip Morris, and R.J. Reynolds detail a broad array of strategies to engineer an antigovernment backlash, using a “Boston Tea Party” theme. A campaign advertisement from tobacco giant Philip Morris sought to use former Republican Senator Howard Baker to compare curbs on tobacco products to infringements on freedom tantamount to the British repression that led to the Tea Parties. A document, dated 1989 and archived at the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library at the university of California, San Francisco, outlined an advertisement with the following script: “British policies of minority rule, increased government intervention, unfair taxation... Ironically, those same issues face us again today. Excise taxes, advertising restrictions, franchise legislation, price supports, and smoking bans make it necessary to act to protect our rights as citizens of the united States.” After a movie clip of colonists casting tea into the harbor, the advertisement proposal indicated that Senator Baker was supposed to say, “The Boston Tea Party was one of the sparks that ignited the Revolution.” A call to resist government regulation of tobacco closed the video.

One attempt to create a national Tea Party phenomenon was defused when O’Dwyer’s Washington Report, a trade publication for the public relations industry, exposed the plan. O’Dwyer’s revealed a proposal from a tobacco industry group, Coalition Against Regressive Taxation (CART), to contract the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to create a citizens’ protest against a proposal to eliminate deductions on excise taxes on products such as tobacco. Burson-Marsteller said it would create a “Boston Tea Party theme” that included a “guerrilla campaign after Labor Day” aimed at the 1992 presidential candidates. Burson-Marsteller's agents would hand out signs while wearing “attention-drawing accouterments” to create political buzz for the cause. One of the fake citizens’ groups suggested in this campaign was Citizens for a Sound Economy, a corporate front group that would later play a dominant role in the anti-Obama Tea Parties (subsequent documents from the late nineties, naming the tobacco industry’s “3rd party allies,” showed that Philip Morris had budgeted up to $2 million a year for Citizens for a Sound Economy).

The exposure of the CART document killed the Tea Party idea in 1992, but Tea Party themes from tobacco lobbyists continued to emerge in later years. When President Clinton proposed taxing cigarettes to fund his health reform plan, the tobacco industry needed citizen outrage. In June of 1994, the New York Times reported that “about 3,000 tobacco farmers mounted what was billed as a modern-day ‘Boston Tea Party’ today, cheering as bales of tobacco were tossed into the Kentucky River to protest proposals to increase taxes on tobacco products to help finance health care.” The Times reporter, as well as dozens of other media outlets which carried the story, did not realize that the event was orchestrated by political operatives working for big tobacco. In an October 5, 1995, memo to Philip Morris, the PR firm Jack Guthrie and Associates of the Worldcom Group took credit for the event. The lobbyists at Jack Guthrie and Associates saw the Kentucky River protest as just a start. The memo outlined that a broad antigovernment Tea Party movement could be orchestrated as a political maneuver to kill proposed Food and Drug Administration regulations on tobacco products as well:

It is conceivable that tens of thousands of people from the six states-- representing hundreds of industries and interests-- could carry a powerful message to the President, Congress and the FDA. JGA (Jack Guthrie and Associates) will explore possible “themes” that could be associated with such rallies. (In June 1994, for example, JGA organized a reenactment of the Boston Tea Party, where 6,000 farmers converged at the Kentucky state capitol to hurl stalks of tobacco into the Kentucky River-- in protest to President Clinton’s proposed tax increases on cigarettes to pay for health care reform. The event, organized on behalf of the Council for Burley Tobacco, was covered by nearly every national print and broadcast outlet.)

Ultimately, the anti-FDA Tea Party never took place. But the David vs. Goliath ethos of the Tea Party clearly took hold within the executive suites of the tobacco industry. “The government’s plan to influence personal behavior through higher taxes is reminiscent of colonial times,” wrote Philip Morris CEO Michael Miles in a letter to shareholders. He added, “back then” the people responded with the “Boston Tea Party.”

And then along came Armey and his big money sugar daddies, the Koch brothers, with their plans to slash government functions-- like privatizing Social Security and e and shift more of the tax burden onto the middle class. How ironic that by trying to cheat the IRS by setting up phony social welfare organizations and triggering a badly handled series of investigations, the Establishment has played right into their hands.

For once, the Supreme Court doesn't back up Justice Nino in saying "f**k off" to victims of corporate depredation

Justice Nino speaking in Milwaukee in September 2010

"Robert Peck, the Washington-based lawyer representing the Louisiana smokers at the Supreme Court, recalled thinking Scalia had made unwarranted assumptions about the case. 'I was really rather surprised he would issue the stay,' Peck said of Scalia's order blocking the judgment from taking effect."

-- from an AP report today headlined on ABC News' website "Scalia's Pro-Tobacco Order Tossed by High Court"

by Ken

As we know, the Supreme Court hardly ever has to explain itself about lots of things, and one of the things it especially doesn't have to explain in any way, shape, or form is its decision not to grant certiorari -- i.e., not to hear a case that a petitioner would like it to.

Since we know that it takes four justices to get a case on the Court docket, when the verdict is, "Sorry, babe," we can infer that there weren't four justices willing to listen, bearing in mind, of course, that justices aren't committing themselves to any outcome with such willingness; it simply indicates that they've got some interest in hearing the case in full. But on any given case -- among the large number the Court is petitioned to hear -- we don't know who was on which side or what anyone's thinking was. All we know is that if cert is granted, there were four justices saying OK, and if not, there weren't.

Every now and then, though, even without any more information, the decision not to hear a case tells us that something went on in the inner sanctum, and today the AP's Mark Sherman sifted out this nugget from the batch of docket matters released Monday, the final day of the Court's current term -- while most Court-watchers were focused on the final, "best for last" rulings of the term: striking down the Arizona election-law provision providing additional funds for candidates accepting public financing who face free-spending non-publicly-funded candidates ("free speech! free speech!", and the thumbs-down on California's attempt to bar sales of especially violent video games to minors ("free speech! free speech!").

At issue, as the AP's Sherman explains, was --

a state court order requiring the tobacco companies [Philip Morris, Brown and Williamson, R. J. Reynolds, and Lorillard] to pay $270 million to start a smoking cessation program in Louisiana. The payment was ordered as part of a class-action lawsuit that Louisiana smokers filed in 1996. They won a jury verdict seven years ago. . . .

Not only did the justices say Monday they were leaving the state court order in place, there were not even four votes to hear the companies' full appeal. And the court provided no explanation of its action.

Again, it's not clear to me why Sherman is so agog about these last bits. When the High Court chooses not to hear a case, it is by definition leaving the ruling of the last court, federal or state, in place, and it never has to explain, and usually doesn't.

What's interesting here, though, is that in apparently extraordinary circumstances one justice had written officially that he thought it "reasonably probable that four justices will vote to grant certiorari," and went so far as to describe it as "significantly possible that the judgment below will be reversed." If I give you, say, four guesses, I'm sure you can identify the justice in question, but if you think a moment, I'll bet you can get it in one.

Think: Who's the most overbearingly self-absorbed blowhard on the bench? Right you are! It's Nino baby -- none other than Justice Antonin Scalia.

Now our Nino wasn't just flapping his gums for the fun of it. The case he was ruling on came before him as the Supreme Court's judicial overseer for the U.S. Fifth Circuit, which includes Louisiana. The ruling he issued in September was in response to a petition by the tobacco companies to delay making any payments while their appeal to the Supreme Court was still pending. (Say, isn't that Doonesbury's Mr. Butts? I can't think what he would be doing here, except that he does have a habit of turning up in places where he isn't wanted.)

Where it gets interesting is that, as Mark Sherman expressed it in his AP lead, Justice Nino "exercised a rarely used power," explaining later: "On a court that almost always acts as a group, Scalia singlehandedly blocked" the state court order, on the grounds we've already noted, that granting of cert seemed to him "reasonably probable" and that he thought it "significantly possible that the judgment below will be reversed."

From the AP report:

Justices have the authority to act on their own to issue an order that blocks another court’s decision from taking effect, often in cases that are being appealed to the high court.

But in recent years they rarely have done so. The last time a justice acted alone in similar circumstances was in 2006, when Justice Anthony Kennedy blocked a court order to remove a giant cross from a public park in San Diego while the matter remained under appeal. The cross case still is working its way through the courts.

In fact, Robert Peck, "the Washington-based lawyer representing the Louisiana smokers at the Supreme Court," recalled being "rather surprised [Scalia] would issue the stay." Thomas Goldstein, "a Washington lawyer and close observer of the court," described this as "a very rare and unusually assertive ruling by a single justice." Goldstein observed that "the later briefing in the case seems to have persuaded the court, and maybe even Scalia himself, not to get involved.”

Again, we have no way of knowing who thought what in the decision not to grant certiorari, just that there weren't four justices willing to do so. But we do know what Justice Nino was thinking in September. He was gleefully applying the legal doctrine of Screw the Whole Effing Lot o' Youse Bums which has come to govern most of the thinking of the radical right-wing Supreme Court majority in cases involving Big Business vs. the people it screws.

Mark Sherman puts it more tactfully: "Scalia noted national concern over the abuse of class-action lawsuits in state courts and raised concerns about the companies’ legal rights," worrying specifically "that without delaying payment, the companies might not be able to recover all their money if they ended up winning in the Supreme Court."

Even our AP scribe gets in a shot, though:

A Louisiana appeals court had a different take on the subject of delay, noting that the plaintiffs are aging and dying at a significant rate.

One of the two named plaintiffs, Gloria Scott, was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2000 and died in 2006.

Sherman notes prominently that Justice Nino is a smoker, and while one might wonder whether that affected his thinking on the case, I'm not persuaded. Hasn't Nino been pretty relentlessly consistent over his quarter-century on the Court (and four years before that on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals) in his view that corporations, especially big ones, have the right of free something-or-other to do any damn thing they want to us? And if we don't like it, the Roberts Court has reserved for us the legal right to . . . uh, well, to lump it.

#

To Republicans, Closing Foreign Tax Loopholes And Keeping 100,000 Teachers Working Amounts To "Job Killing Legislation" For "Special Interests"

A couple days ago, a congressional friend of Blue America's called from his home and told me he's getting a great deal accomplished on the break in terms of getting out and meeting his constituents and organizing his staff for a tough reelection battle. He also told me he's a rare exception and that most Members of Congress-- both parties-- split their summer vacation time between selling their asses to corporate special interests and just shutting down entirely and forgetting about the miseries of Washington (including even reelection). When I saw John Boehner's tweet (above) late yesterday-- responding to Speaker Pelosi ordering the House back in session to deal urgently with saving teachers' jobs... stuff Boehner and the GOP think of as "special interests"-- I thought of the contrast with the tweet he was responding to:


Boehner rose to political power selling his ass to the highest corporate bidders and if he's most famous for handing out tobacco lobbyists' checks (bribe money, as many Republicans confirmed when Boehner was caught) on the House floor, he certainly hasn't been ignored by the Finance Sector ($3,612,064), the Medical Giants ($1,473,347), or the Insurance Industry ($1,000,996). Lobbyists have directly given him-- apart from what they donate to his shady leadership PAC-- almost 300 grand.



So I don't know if Boehner was pissed off because he wanted to spend the break filling his coffers with more corporate cash or because he was eager to raise the numbers of days on the links from 119 in 2009 to 129 in 2010. But once Collins and Snowe did all they could to weaken the $26.1 billion bill-- cutting the food stamp program by $11.9 billion starting in 2014-- and agreed to help fund education and healthcare assistance to the overburdened states and then crossed the aisle to vote to shut down the GOP filibuster, it was almost inevitable that Pelosi would recall the House to give final approval so it could go to the president and he could sign it. Over 100,000 teaching jobs are a stake (unlike Big Tobacco or Wall Street, a "special interest" for John Boehner and his caucus). Here's the announcement Pelosi had Hoyer make yesterday and what sent Boehner off into a twittery rage:

Next week, the House will return to session to vote to keep teachers on the job and provide assistance to states to ensure health services continue for those in need. Both of those provisions have already passed the House twice, and now that the Senate is moving forward to pass this critical aid, I look forward to bringing it to the House Floor for a vote. 

The House will meet in pro forma session on Monday, and will be in at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday to vote on the bill and send it to the President for his signature.

Boehner's official website went on the attack and I figured I'd reproduce it here in case he comes to his senses and decides to remove it when he realizes how heartless it makes him and his party look:

“The American people don’t want more Washington ‘stimulus’ spending-- especially in the form of a pay-off to union bosses and liberal special interests. This stunning display of tone-deafness comes at the expense of American workers, who will be hit by another job-killing tax hike because Washington Democrats can’t kick their addiction to more government ‘stimulus’ spending. Democrats should be listening to their constituents-- who are asking ‘where are the jobs?’-- instead of scampering back to Washington to push through more special interest bailouts and job-killing tax hikes.

“The best way to address the challenges our cities and states are facing is to get our economy back on track, not kick the can down the road and double down on the same failing policies. Republicans are listening to the American people and offering better solutions to cut wasteful Washington spending and help small businesses put people back to work.

“Next week, the House will also consider Rep. Tom Price’s privileged resolution regarding Democrats’ plans to pass controversial job-killing legislation during a lame-duck session. This will be yet another opportunity for Democrats to promise to respect the will of the American people, or stick with their liberal Leaders’ desire to not ‘rule out’ passing a national energy tax or massive spending bills in a lame duck.”

As you know, the Party of Hypocrisy, doesn't believe in doing anything important during a lame-duck session-- just little inconsequential things like when Boehner helped railroad through some fatuous impeachment articles through against President Clinton, articles that were rejected by the Senate. But of course the Republicans are resisting coming back to Washington to pass this legislation. It helps the country recover and it helps average American families, anathema to the GOP. North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall phrased it well yesterday when Richard Burr voted with the other Republicans in opposition to the legislation:

Senator Burr voted against bipartisan legislation Wednesday that closes foreign tax loopholes and protects the jobs of over 4,500 teachers in North Carolina and 140,000 teachers nationwide. The cost of the bill is completely offset by closing foreign tax loopholes and by spending cuts in other areas. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said today that the legislation would actually decrease the deficit. Republican and Democratic Governors across the country support the bill, but Senate Republicans opposed the measure, not wanting to give Democrats a legislative victory...

After 16 years in Washington, Senator Burr just doesn’t get it. North Carolina families are getting hit on all sides, but he still thinks he represents the powerful interests who fund his campaigns instead of the people of our state. Now, he's standing up for corporate tax loopholes when he should be keeping teachers in the classroom.

UPDATE: And Take THAT, you... you... you... Boehner!



See what it says there: "Records show that Mr. Boehner took 180 trips to destinations outside his southwest Ohio district from 1999 to 2005. Most of them were to exclusive golf resorts, including-- yes-- St. Andrews, Pebble Beach in California, and Pinehurst in North Carolina. While golfers are plentiful among the denizens of Capitol Hill, the group pointed out that these junkets exceeded the 149 plane trips the congressman made at taxpayer expense between Washington, D.C., and home during the same time span... Aides to Mr. Boehner... did not dispute the statistics."

So their disputations this week are, like... pretty funny.


UPDATE: Big Ed Liked Our Billboard Campaign-- And We Liked His Framing!

The Senate's Back At Work

This morning the first bill in that chamber was for cloture-- to cut off the filibuster on H.R. 1256, Henry Waxman's Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which passed the House 298-112 on April 2. The bill gives jurisdiction over tobacco products to the Food and Drug Administration. The tobacco industry opposed it and the biggest recipients of their legalized bribes backed them (of course).

The de facto filibuster was shut off at 11:01AM 84-11. The 11 pro-cancer senators (with the "donations" they've gotten from Big Tobacco):

Kit Bond (R-MO- $53,950)
Sam Brownback (R-KS- $4,950)
Jim Bunning (R-KY- $194,166)
Richard Burr (R-NC- $359,100-- the #2 all time recipient of Tobacco largesse)
"Dr." Tom Coburn (R-OK- $6,500)
Jim DeMint (R-SC- $53,750)
Kay Hagan (D-NC- $19,200)
Orrin Hatch (R-UT- $55,500)
Jim Inhofe (R-OK- $63,500)
Miss McConnell (R-KY- $419,025-- the #1 all time recipient of Tobacco largesse)
Pat Roberts (R-KS- $59,597)

Meanwhile, much of the Senate is still obsessing over the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor. The Republicans are now playing a stalling game, claiming July, which is when President Obama has asked them to settle the matter, is too soon. Alabama's KKK member, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, claims he won't be ready until September. (He went to an unaccredited Buy Bull college and is a slow reader.) What the Republicans are trying to do-- mostly through their surrogates on Fox and at Hate Talk radio-- is to just keep on smearing Sotomayor with the hope that it turns voters off to Obama.

With Newt Gingrich trying to take back his despicable "she's-a-racist" comments on Judge Sotomayor, Republicans are starting to turn on the loudest and most recognizable voice of the GOP: Pig Man. First it was far right Texas Senator John Cornyn asking Limbaugh to zip his trap. And today is was Lindsey Graham, another Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who said it isn't fair for Republican extremists (like Limbaugh, Coulter, Beck, Tancredo, Buchanan, etc) to call Judge Sonia Sotomayer a racist. Not to put too fine a point on it though, Lindsey then admitted that opposing Sotomayor puts the interests of the GOP over the interests of the country-- and says he intends to do just that! "I'm not doing the country any good looking back playing a game of tit for tat," he admitted. "But I'm not going to put my party at a disadvantage if this is the way the game is played." So? Since when does "fairness"-- or veracity-- have anything to do with Republican Party talking points? Limbaugh, though he's still smarting from Schwarzenegger referring to him as the GOP's 650 pound gorilla, isn't retracting or backing down. Here's the problem the GOP has to face:




UPDATE: Coburn Wants To Ban Tobacco

When Coburn didn't vote for the bill I assumed he was just a crook on the take like Burr, McConnell, Bunning, Roberts and DeMint. I was incorrect. He didn't vote for the bill because it didn't go far enough.

“What we should be doing is banning tobacco,” Coburn said in a recent Senate floor speech he gave during a debate on a tobacco regulation bill. “Nobody up here has the courage to do that. It is a big business. There are millions of Americans who are addicted to nicotine. And even if they are not addicted to the nicotine, they are addicted to the habit.”

...Coburn has suggested banning tobacco outright rather than passing a bill that would authorize the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restrict the manufacturing, marketing and sale of tobacco products.

“If we really want to make a difference in health and we want to eliminate dependence on tobacco, what we have to do is to stop the addiction,” Coburn said during floor debate.

...Coburn made his case against the bill because he said it would send a mixed message to the FDA, which is charged with ensuring the safety of food and drugs. Coburn’s argument is that there’s nothing safe about tobacco and that it would make more sense for the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to regulate it.

Coburn suggests that putting cigarettes and chew under the authority of an agency that to this point has been tasked with ensuring product safety would only make it tougher to ban tobacco someday.

“In this bill, we allow existing tobacco products not ever to be eliminated,” he said.

Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, supports the bill.

Coburn suggested Democrats are backing the legislation with an eye on helping a key interest group: trial lawyers.

“We have had all of these lawsuits through the years where billions of dollars have gone into attorneys' coffers,” he said.

We'll have to check in on that brilliant theory by talking with some of the bill's supports, like Lamar Alexander (R-TN, David Diapers Vitter (R-LA), Jerrferson Beauregard Sessaions III (R-AL), John Thune (R-SD), John McCain (R-AZ), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), John Cornyn (R-TX), Thad Cochran (R-MS)...

What They Hell Is Wrong With Richard Burr? Hurting Vets Isn't Enough-- Now He Wants To Spread Cancer And Heart Disease?

A couple days ago Rachel Maddow blew the whistle on the block North Carolina's obstructionist Senator Richard Burr's has on the nomination of Tammy Duckworth for a job in the Veteran's Affairs Department. Duckworth, who is universally recognized as one of the country's most forceful and effective advocates for vets when she ran the Illinois Veteran's Affairs Dept is a highly decorated officer in the National Guard who lost both legs in combat in Iraq. Maddow to Burr: "How about diligently doing the right thing right now and picking a different high horse to ride in on, ok?"

Burr, another garden variety Republican vet-hating war-monger and extremist, avoided the military because he was too busy selling lawn furniture for seventeen years and forging ties with the Big Business interests that would later finance his political career. He's on the Senate Armed Services Committee and is the ranking Repug on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. The only pro-war bill he ever opposed was on May 24, 2007, not because it made emergency supplemental appropriations for our military in Iraq, but because it also included appropriations to support efforts to save New Orleans (i.e., African Americans) from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. The bill passed 80-14 despite Burr's obstinate Jesse Helm's imitation.

Now about Burr's ongoing campaign to spread cancer and heart disease. Is that hyperbole? Not really. On Thursday the House passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act 298-112, with seventy Republicans telling John Boehner he could stuff his tobacco bribery checks where the sun don't shine, crossing the aisle and voting with the Democrats. Burr, who has taken more bribes from Big Tobacco than any other member of Congress except Miss McConnell-- yes even more than notorious tobacco whores John Boehner (R-OH) and Eric Cantor (R-VA)-- has never ceased battling against legislation regulating his paymasters in the tobacco companies. He has been Congress' chief opponent to warning labels and now he's vowing to filibuster the bill the House just passed, which seeks to lower the number of deaths-- currently 400,000 per year-- related to smoking tobacco.

President Obama supports the bill and his administration issued a statement explaining why:

Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States and is a contributing factor to scores of diseases and conditions inflicting misery upon millions of our citizens. Further, tobacco use is a major factor driving the increasing costs of health care in the U.S. and accounts for over a hundred billion dollars annually in financial costs to the economy.

When the House passed the same bill in 2008, Burr had threatened a filibuster then too-- and Bush said even if the Senate passed it, he would veto it. There were 60 Senate sponsors at the time, not enough to override a veto, so they just put it off for a year. Now they'll just need to shut down Burr's filibuster-- and that takes 60 votes. Supporters have closer to 70.