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PufPuf93 wrote:Who takes $$$ from Gilead and its officers and board members?
PufPuf93 » 17 May 2019 12:33 wrote:This is criminal. Good for AOC.
Why haven't other politicians spoken out?
Who takes $$$ from Gilead and its officers and board members?
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https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/ ... ask-pharma
Published on Thursday, May 16, 2019 by Common Dreams
'Spoiler: Because Australia Has Universal Healthcare': Watch Ocasio-Cortez Ask Pharma CEO Why HIV Drug Costs $8 Overseas But $1,780 in the US
"We the public, we the people, developed this drug, we paid for this drug. There's no reason this should be $2,000 a month. People are dying because of it."
During a House hearing on Thursday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked the CEO of one of America's largest pharmaceutical companies a simple but crucial question: Why does a life-saving HIV drug that costs $8 a month in Australia have a $2,000 price tag in the U.S.?
Gilead chief executive Daniel O'Day declined to comment on the low price of Truvada for PrEP in Australia, but said the reason the cost is close to $2,000—"the current list price is $1,780," he said—in the United States is because the drug has "patent protection."
As the Washington Post reported in March, the development of Truvada as a treatment for HIV was "almost fully funded by U.S. taxpayers."
The U.S. government patented the treatment in 2015, according to the Post, but has "opted not to file an infringement suit to enforce" the patent even as Gilead—which argues the government patent is invalid—rakes in billions of dollars in profits from Truvada.
Ocasio-Cortez highlighted these facts during the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Thursday.
"I think it's important that we notice here that we the public, we the people, developed this drug, we paid for this drug, we led and developed all of the grounding patents to create PrEP, and then that patent has been privatized despite the fact that that patent is owned by the public," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We refuse to enforce it."
"There's no reason this should be $2,000 a month," Ocasio-Cortez added. "People are dying because of it. We own the intellectual property for it. People are dying for no reason. For no reason. We developed this drug."
In a tweet following Thursday's hearing, Ocasio Cortez answered her own question on why Truvada's price is $8 in Australia.
"Spoiler: Because Australia has universal healthcare," wrote the New York congresswoman.
The reason the United States hasn't joined the rest of the industrialized world in establishing a universal healthcare system is not individual drug company executives like O'Day, said Ocasio-Cortez.
"I don't blame you. I blame us. I blame this body," Ocasio-Cortez said during the hearing. "Because every single developed country in the world guarantees healthcare as a right except us. Except the United States. Because we can't get it together. Because we don't have the fortitude to kick pharmaceutical lobbyists [out of] our congressional offices."
AOC will inevitably follow in Obama's footsteps
Feds probing AOC’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti after sudden resignation
The Feds are looking into possible campaign finance misdeeds by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff and lead rainmaker, who suddenly resigned Friday, federal sources told The Post.
The inquiry centers on two political action committees founded by Saikat Chakrabarti, the top aide who quit along with Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent, the sources said. Trent left to join the congresswoman’s 2020 re-election campaign.
The brash Chakrabarti, who masterminded Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign and steered her proposed Green New Deal, had caused uproar in the halls of Congress with a series of combative tweets that contributed to a rift between his rookie boss and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“People were not happy that he used his Twitter account to comment about members and the bills that he and his boss oppose,” a senior House Democratic staffer said. “There was a series of colliding and cascading grievances.”
The two PACs being probed, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, were both set up by Chakrabarti to support progressive candidates across the country.
But they funneled more than $1 million in political donations into two private companies that Chakrabarti also incorporated and controlled, according to Federal Election Commission filings and a complaint filed in March with the regulatory agency.
In 2016 and 2017, the PACs raised about $3.3 million, mostly from small donors. A third of the cash was transferred to two private companies whose names are similar to one of the PACs — Brand New Congress LLC and Brand New Campaign LLC — federal campaign filings show.
Last Thursday, the House of Representatives passed legislation that will, once signed into law, set one of the highest caps ever on the discretionary budget for the Pentagon and related programs. The Democratic Party that now controls the House voted by a vast majority in favor of the bill, and, remarkably, so did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.
One might wonder, if the majority of Republicans were not compelled by their party leader’s cajoling (primarily citing, of course, their rejection of any further increase of the debt), why did the Democrats vote almost unanimously for this bill? The answer is simple: Because it was a deal brokered by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House and quintessential representative of the Democratic Party establishment. In collaboration with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Pelosi took charge of the project and successfully rallied her troops around it, including some of the most progressive party members.
Belligerent Savant » Sun Aug 04, 2019 10:50 pm wrote:.
https://nypost.com/2019/08/03/feds-prob ... signation/
Feds probing AOC’s chief of staff Saikat Chakrabarti after sudden resignation
The Feds are looking into possible campaign finance misdeeds by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s chief of staff and lead rainmaker, who suddenly resigned Friday, federal sources told The Post.
The inquiry centers on two political action committees founded by Saikat Chakrabarti, the top aide who quit along with Ocasio-Cortez spokesman Corbin Trent, the sources said. Trent left to join the congresswoman’s 2020 re-election campaign.
The brash Chakrabarti, who masterminded Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign and steered her proposed Green New Deal, had caused uproar in the halls of Congress with a series of combative tweets that contributed to a rift between his rookie boss and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“People were not happy that he used his Twitter account to comment about members and the bills that he and his boss oppose,” a senior House Democratic staffer said. “There was a series of colliding and cascading grievances.”
The two PACs being probed, Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats, were both set up by Chakrabarti to support progressive candidates across the country.
But they funneled more than $1 million in political donations into two private companies that Chakrabarti also incorporated and controlled, according to Federal Election Commission filings and a complaint filed in March with the regulatory agency.
In 2016 and 2017, the PACs raised about $3.3 million, mostly from small donors. A third of the cash was transferred to two private companies whose names are similar to one of the PACs — Brand New Congress LLC and Brand New Campaign LLC — federal campaign filings show.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Retweeted Leader McConnell
The House passed HR8, a Bipartisan Background Checks Act, *5 months ago* and the Senate has yet to vote on it.
It was one of our 1st major priorities after ending the gov shutdown.
You’ve been sitting on it since February giving bogus excuses.
Care to explain the people why?
Video games aren’t causing mass shootings, white supremacy is.
Sadly the GOP refuse to acknowledge that, bc their strategy relies on rallying a white supremacist base.
That‘s why the President hosts stadiums of people chanting “send her back”& targets Congress-members of color.
Using the words “invasion,” “infestation,”w respect to a specific, targeted group of people, implying they are vermin: this is the language of white supremacy &it goes all the way to the top.
It’s not a matter of political stances. This is stoking hatred+endangering the country.
& again, this time asking the FBI.
It seems easier to label domestic, self-radicalized shooters who are Muslim as terrorists.
Yet white supremacists, who are responsible for far more violence in the US,often escape these charges.
Now they’re the #1 source of domestic terror
For months, we have been raising questions around how white supremacists have been able to escape terrorist labeling.
https://twitter.com/AOC?ref_src=twsrc%5 ... r%5Eauthor
@AOC
Jul 18
More
Reminder of what people are calling the “radical, extreme-left agenda”:
Medicare for All
A Living Wage & Labor Rights
K-16 schooling, aka Public Colleges
100% Renewable Energy
Fixing the pipes in Flint
Not Hurting Immigrants
Holding Wall Street Accountable
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