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Booker and the Big Pharma Dems Have No Excuse. This Vote Proves It

#1

Booker and the Big Pharma Dems Have No Excuse. This Vote Proves It.

Richard Eskow

It’s devastating, and potentially lethal, when Americans can’t afford life-saving drugs because their elected representatives are in thrall to Big Pharma. It’s disappointing when Democrats offer implausible excuses for their votes, as Sen. Cory Booker and twelve other senators did last week.

And it’s downright outrageous when those same Democrats claim their votes were driven by drug safety concerns, since all twelve voted to lower drug safety standards when they supported the 21st Century Cures Act.

#2

Since MSM won’t report on this at all, most people will never know how thoroughly they have been betrayed by the supposedly ‘caring party’.

 "Democrats will have to move fast to undo the damage these senators have done."

LOL. When I first came across the LOL anagram I thought it meant ‘lots of luck’. Both meanings apply here.

#3

I knew Booker was a sell-out from the beginning. Rush Holt should have gotten that Senate seat, he was the true progressive. Now we have to waste four years trying to deny Booker the nomination the elite want to anoint him with.

#4

Senators Cantwell and Murray from Washington have agreed to perform together at he inauguration. Anonymous sources have reported they will perform an old Grateful Dead tune: Friend of the Devil.

#5

Anyone surprised by this deep betrayal hasn’t been paying attention. Many of us saw the potential of four years of Hillary as filled with such betrayals. A Bernie Sanders candidacy offered a break from such treachery. The democratic party is disappearing at the federal and local levels. Our political system is disintegrating before our eyes. Wishing it a speedy demise.

#6

Well said. Not only was Dr. Rush Holt the real progressive, he was out in front in the effort to fight the corrupt, hackable, voting machine behemoth that steam-rolled over a very important part of our election system. Holt was right but, somehow, most of our “leaders” are content with having elections whose results can’t be verified.

#7

Well said. Not only was Dr. Rush Holt the real progressive, he was out in front in the effort to fight the corrupt, hackable, voting machine behemoth that steam-rolled over a very important part of our election system. Holt was right but, somehow, most of our “leaders” are content with having elections whose results can’t be verified.

#8

The democrats can’t undo the damage this vote has caused because in other cases they are willing to do the same thing.
Democrats made their choice of who they represent and it isn’t us.
Right now they are supposed to be fighting for us against the orange, but their efforts are half hearted and damaging in the long run.
Dr. King said of the white moderates, that they are more devoted to order than to justice. This still applies today with the dems that say they want what we want and then go get what they want, big donors. Obama’s fetish over a “smooth transition”. To what doesn’t seem to matter.
I don’t see any change coming from them, Shumer, Pelosi, Brock. They would rather have a Trump than Bernie. Trump gives them an enemy they can feign fighting, while Bernie would require them to change. Not a chance.
We simply must give up on them and form a strong third party.
Cory Booker has been a sell out for a long time for anyone paying attention. His voting record speaks for it’s self if anyone cared to check it. A run in 2020 will be the same as a run from Clinton. DOA

#9

No lessons learned from the 2016 election. Just business as usual-- and I do mean business as usual. Screw these capitalist pig backstabbers.

#10

Saftety concerns my butt.

Vote these bums out at the ealiest opportunity.

Maybe in the meantime anonymous will put them on their radar.

#11

It has been reported in the press. That’s where the internet actually gets most if its more factual information. The NYT is widely read in NJ so Bookers vote is no secret. Three states, NJ, WA, and DE provided 6 of those 13 Democratic naye votes. Booker is a real risk due to his obvious ambitions.

#12

Petulance is not an organizing principle.

Sell out doesn’t really apply to Booker. He’s been an avid opportunist since his days as mayor of Newark. I’m almost glad he took this vote. Few issues are more revealing.

#13

Instead of cory booker thinking about a run for the WH, he should be thinking about an indictment for bribe taking and his quid-pro-quo vote to pay-off the bribery voting against the S-K bill! Booker is just another BS sold-out corrupt politician - who is shielded by other corrupt dems thus complicit to his betrayals!

Yet another DINO corporate-shill criminal - along with Billary, Obama, and Shillary being groomed for candidacy by the corrupt dem party establishment sellout swine! The number of such sellout R’Con lite politicians that use progressive rhetoric only to bamboozle the voters then revert to corporate whore are many and must be rooted-out (along with big-money influence) if there is to be any true opposition to the trump/r’con regime!

Apparently there is no political leadership outraged or courageous enough (YET) to go/build a third-party in the face of zero real reforms (so-far) that the Sanders wing stands-for in the utterly morally-bankrupt dem machine!

If there is no real foundational reform, whatever shill faux-progressive candidate they put forward will not gain support from the millions who refused to go along like good little sheep to vote for the other evil candidate…

#14

Sell out certainly does apply to him. He sold his vote to big Pharma, which gives him big bucks. And he is an opportunist.

#15

He had nothing left to sell.

#16

Let’s not forget that the vast majority of democrats voted for cheaper Canadian drugs while the vast majority of republicans voted against. Over and over and over again we see that the average democrat is nearly always better than the average republican. It is, of course, good to call out those who seem too controlled by corporate interests.

#17

Yes, sir. And they do it time after time. Count the votes to see who most needs to vote a certain way and let them do it, knowing it will pass or not pass, whatever the corpses want.

Same ol’, same ol’. And yes. we Berniecrats are hoping to get the neolibcons out and Berniecrats in. If that doesn’t happen, I’m hoping that we all call on Bernie and others to form a newly energized Independent Party, inclusive and progressive.

#18

This. The MSM could slow down the MIC, save our social security, Medicaid and Medicare, stop fossil fuels, oh, the list is long.

LOL indeed.

#19

I’ve been brooding about our own Murray and Cantwell crossing the aisle to join Republicans in blocking drug importation for days. Finally, the Seattle Times wrote an article on the topic, though their figures were 500+k pharma donations to Murray and roughly 75k to Cantwell–maybe it was over a longer span of time. The paper received 700 or so comments in a few days, not one of them supportive of either candidate or the position they took.

What troubles me is that neither candidate will feel endangered by voter anger. They know that the state dem party will never allow them to be primaried, and our top two ballot system guarantees that there will be no alternative candidate when the final vote is called for. All each needs is for a suitably undesirable republican to oppose them and lesser evilism will take care of the rest. Murray was just returned for another term and is completely insulated. Cantwell is up in 2018 so I have read.

I have asked the state party to censure both; hah. I know it’s futile.

My questio to Eskow would be–you’re well connected, knowledgeable. What can be done to keep the outrage going? Oh, not for the sake of outrage itself, but to increase pressure and foment (I know that sounds subversive) yet more outrage and–but what? And…what? A recall? A national petition?

Something must be done, and far as I can see, we voters don’t have the key or the leverage.

#20

I suggest that all who are reading this show some courage and make a clean break from the US’s evil, capitalist, greed driven, duopolistic abuse syndrome that has inflicted the nation’s electoral process. Vote third party. Organize a new party.