I see 70 Dems who need to be primaried.

Thanks for posting this for the ”know-your-enemy” file.

Minor quibble — Halvorson isn’t a Blue Dog (as in ”Blue Dogs Debbie Halvorson and Heath Schuler”; she’s a DLCer, like many others on the list:

Wilson, Arcuri, Barrow, Kosmas, Connolly, Meek, Altmire, Sanchez, Himes, Kratovil, Peters, Carney, Griffith, Bright, Bean, Holt, Adler, Meeks, Schrader, McMahon, Carson, McIntyre, Melancon, Murphy, Mitchell, Foster, Maffei, and Wu.

Primary every last one of them, and those who have sought out and received Netroots support should not expect to find it in the future. I’m looking at you, Larry Kissell and Eric Massa, among others.

what the hell is Rush Holt doing here ??

and whither Emanuel darlings Becerra and Capuano ??

What’s Rush Holt doing here?

About $275,000 in campaign contributions over his career from pharma/health products.

Bacerra: $107,427 from pharma/health products, to be exact. Not his biggest industry, but it’s a lot of money. I’d look to see if he has a pharma plant in his district.

Capuano: $75,450 from pharma/health products. Again, not his biggest donor, but how do you replace that kind of cash?

This should be an open source project for the Firedoglakers; each of us should be working on a profile of these 70 members, showing how much they’ve received over a career from pharma, whether they have pharma interests in their districts.

And whether their personal financial disclosure statements show any pharma holdings. Keep in mind that a bill to ban trading on internal congressional knowledge has been stuck in committee. (Gee, I wonder why…)

And Gary Peters of Michigan’s MI-09, SHAME ON YOU.

For a guy who’s been so bright about the fraud committed by the financial industry, you don’t seem to be doing so well with grokking that fraud doesn’t stop there.

Good catch!

I need to see if I can find that Blue Dog letter to the editor tool again. Get ‘em where it hurts ‘em — in their hometown papers.

Yep, Joe Donnelly is on there. I guess I’m going to have to take the gloves off at the Jefferson Jackson dinner in about three weeks.

Why are these critters so naked in their willingness to serve the interests of corporate america?

I don’t care for corporations, but the reality is that they are often the devils we have to deal with until we have a different economic model. But why does congress seem to feel they must protect shareholder interests above consumers – payers?

If taxpayers had real choices, that is, real competition in the market place, the presumption is that there would real value and the lowest price for the product or service being “sold”. This has been shown again and again and again to not be how it works in the health industry. We have no competition, we have no choices. We have monopoly control of the market.

Why are dems supporting monopolism? Don’t they see that? Are they just sellouts for money and have no ethics at all? Are they able to rationalize by claiming they are reducing the horror of a multiple to rape to a ordinary rape? Oh goodie goodie.

Mornin’

my consternation about Holt was due to his signing the Pledge

as to how much $$$ they’re all taking, you probably know Slinkerwink has been running a series of Big Orange diaries as to who has taken what – and from whom – it became immediately obvious some of the bigger players donations have slipped in as contributions “from individuals” – ie lobbyists – keep meaning to see if there’s a pattern there – the more progressive the veneer (I’m looking at you Congr Eshoo), the more stealth the contributions

probably old news to you, but has been eye opening for this dfh

That is a great suggestion. Keep shining light on the corporate manipulation. Maybe we could get people researching. Perhaps people could put up who they will research and we can post some good resource links like you did.

And Slinkerwink’s posts have been great.

Very Distressing and thank you for allowing me to participate.

I have been telling people here and at home that our Rep Scott Murphy is an undeclared Blue Dog. The local district chair is already talking how it is more important to pass a bill than to worry about a public option. Originally, I thought Murphy had a chance because he took campaign contributions from the area Unions, but just this week I received advertisements for Murphy with PHarma on the sidebar. This whole healthcare bill stinks of corruption now. I feel ashamed to have written to my friends in support of the earlier versions of the bill.

Is it just me, or do the rest of you find it profoundly offensive that the DLCers (and Blue Dogs and Repugs) are all so willing to sell out health care reform (such as it is) for the benefit of the very corporations that have brought us to the need for reform in the first place?

We keep debating minor changes in the way things are done so that we don’t damage the predatory corporations that make their money off of the denial of care to those who are suffering!

Why aren’t we talking about reform along the lines of Germany which limits the compensation of the executives based upon the number of insured? Why aren’t we talking about capping the profit that the insurance companies can make to a fixed amount, based on the number of subscribers?

Furthermore, why are we so worried about preserving the companies who have brought us to the brink of economic collapse? Congress should be debating how to best serve the country and its people, not how to best preserve the predators that have brought us to the brink of economic collapse and financial ruin!

“I’d look to see if he has a pharma plant in his district”

B-I-N-G-O !

is it possible that the WH applied direct pressure.. called a few up? It is theoretically possible that someone could support selling out to big pharma while still embracing the PO, I suppose.

Meanwhile, in the real world, health insurance premiums up another 5% year-on-year (versus unadjusted CPI inflation growth of -2.1% for the same period):
http://www.marketwatch.com/sto…..2009-09-15

I just wrote Boswell and copied the entire letter. My email started with: “Well, my, my, my. It seems you’d like Waxman to substitute his language in favor of Big Pharma’s. They’ve sure got you by the short ones, don’t they?” and concluded with: “I hope you have a lot of pharmaceutical industry voters in your district.”
Aw, I voted for the Socialist Workers Party’s candidate last time, and I’ll write in a vote this time if I have to. Screw him. I’m not playing football politics anymore. I’m voting my conscience.

have yet to figure out the pattern of WH choreography – hence my earlier questions about Capuano and Becerra – the usually malleable Perrello (sp?) VA-05, is missing from this list as is Rahm’s friday night girl Schakowsky – who the hell knows ?

Thanks.

But OMFG, you pups absolutely must be sure to check and see what’s in the backyards of these 70 Dems.

These pharma/health products companies have facilities in Capuano’s district, for example — and these are NOT all of them:

AMAG Pharmaceuticals, Inc. — designs, develops and manufactures contrast agents for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).
Alkermes — is focused on drug delivery, by way of several partnered programs as well as in-house development activites.
Altus — involved in the discovery, development and manufacture of highly purified and stabilized protein-based products.
Amgen — develops therapeutic proteins in oncology/hematopoiesis, inflammation, and neurobiology/endocrinology.
Ariad — a leader in the design and development of a new class of pharmaceuticals that target intracellular signaling pathways to alter the course of disease.
Bayer — develops and markets various drugs and chemicals; its Oncogene Science branch is located in district.
Biopure — Corporation develops, manufactures and markets oxygen therapeutics.
CombinatoRx, Inc. — a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing new medicines built from synergistic combinations of approved drugs.
Dyax — involved in the discovery, development, and commmercialization of fully human monoclonal antibodies as well as small proteins and peptides.
Immunogen — involved in the discovery, development, and commercialization of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies and treatments in oncology.
Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. — a leading drug discovery and development company, incorporating large-scale genetics, genomics, high throughput screening and informatics in an integrated science and technology platform.
Transgenomic — a global company with a core biotechnology business that includes principal technologies for DNA/RNA and protein analysis and separations.
Xanthus Pharmaceuticals — invovled in the discovery, acquisition, development, and commercialization of small-molecules for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune disorders.

These are just the facilities in Cambridge, doesn’t include others.

What’s this tell me? The MA-08 district is very, very blue, former districts of Joseph P. Kennedy and Tip O’Neill — so Capuano signs the pledge.

And then the pharma/health product companies in his district, most of them research firms, get all twitty on him and rattle his chain, because they don’t know what happens under the new model in terms of future money for R&D.

Anybody here in that district want to check this out?

{BTW, I used The Lab Rat site to find this info.]

Larry F**ing Kissell! After the support and volunteer effort that the netroots put out on his behalf!

Question: How many of these names were just applied to the letter just because they were formal members of the Blue Dog Coalition? How many of these folks will stand behind this letter?

What is obvious is that this is Mike Ross’s doing. Drugster that he is.

We need a list of those who came to FDL and took donations from us. Would like to write to them.

HELLO??? OBAMA TEAM??? Rahm, this means YOU, fucker.

Get on the gawddamned stick and write some legislation to create deep, deep tax credits for pharma/health products R&D.

IMMEDIATELY, MORONS. You should have seen this one coming. I’ll bet right now without digging too much farther this has been one of the big icebergs screwing with the legislation.

Jeebus, R&D here in the U.S. MAKES JOBS, got it? And you can sell the fuck out of this bill to your idiot opposition because they loves them some tax credits.

Oh, and be sure to include in the text that all R&D spending which qualified for tax credits must be on facilities here in the U.S., which employ U.S. citizens, so that it acts as a stimulus here. It’s also a national security issue because we should not be allowing the bulk of pharma/health product R&D to happen overseas.

And we progressives are fucking stupid. * spit *

Wow. That is quite a bit of bought influence there. Thanks for the links.

And your comment at 22 – spot on.

It seems like we need to write the bill. The fact that this cannot be thought out to be a positive sum piece of legislation is beyond comprehension. With the except of what I mentioned the other day – the role of the finance industry cashing in on misery. So I would add finance regulatory control into the bill.

I thought the recommendation from Germany to the G-20 the other day for a global tax on financial transactions was actually a wonderful suggestion. I’ll link to it.

hehe. ‘course nobody will be able to afford these new innovative drugs ;-P.

Eric Massa and Paul Hodes???

Goddammit, those dudes have been begging me for $$$ ever since I gave to them in the general [after prompting by ActBlue].

Time to see if I can figure out a way to get through the usual “you must be a constituent to communicate on our website” bs to send them my thoughts.

you can start with the distinguished gentleman from Fl-08 X~o

I’m going to try and work on Sanchez as she’s one of them in my state. I can’t believe how many of them there are. Time for them to go.

I don’t like the way the phrase “health care reform” has been slowly altered to “health care insurance reform.” When automobiles were invented, we didn’t try to FIX the inferior horse and buggy mode of transportation–we got RID of it.

Just called Larry Kissell’s office. The staffer didn’t know about the letter. I pointed out to him that it not do what it appeared to do, close the doughnut hole, but kept it perpetually at 50%. I also told him that what needs to happen is that the doughnut hole be closed completely on enactment.

Grayson was the one that shocked me the most. I thought he was a great candidate – wrong again.

Here’s the link to that global tax story.

Germany’s finance minister has called for a global tax to be imposed on financial transactions in an effort to end what he derided as “binge-drinking” on markets.

In one of the more radical steps mooted by a world leader to reform the financial system, Peer Steinbrück said receipts from the tax would be used to repay the cost to governments of tackling the crisis, including fiscal stimuli and bank rescue operations.

“The cost of the crisis should not be borne alone by small taxpayers,” he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.

One person close to Mr Steinbrück said under the proposal, a 0.005 per cent tax would be paid on all financial transactions by banks, insurance companies and investment funds.

The call opens up a divide in the German government ahead of the G20 summit and national elections this month. It clashes with the agenda of chancellor Angela Merkel, who will head the German delegation to the Pittsburgh summit on September 24 and 25.

(my bold)

I can’t wait for Baucus to release this trash so that people like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow can start beating this bill, it’s authors and the clowns that signed the PhRMA letter into the ground. The “media” will be forced to talk about it. I just saw an article on thinkprogress.com on Wendell Potter who use to work for Cigna and has already said thatthis bill is a gift to the insurance industry. He’s already appeared on Keith’s and Rachel’s show and will likely be booked again once this garbage is released. We can also expect Raul Grivalja to bash this bill as he already has. I want to see them all this week. Maxine Waters, Raul, Anthony Weiner, Bernie Saunders, Tom Harkin, who has taken over Kennedy’s Committee Chairmanship. This should be the beginning of the end of this bill. Let’s kill it!

Job extortion. It always comes back to that when you’re cutting government spending that goes to corporations, doesn’t it.

I want to see Baucus humiliated and riddiculed for this!

Used to that here in MI. Jobs is a four-letter word, wielded like a weapon at the head of any politician not sufficiently armed and trained in the use of corporate-issue kneepads.

Want to keep the water clean? NO JOBS FOR YOU!

Want to ensure a living wage? NO JOBS FOR YOU!

Want to ensure corporate citizens pay their fair share of taxes? NO JOBS FOR YOU!

Jeebus, it’s like dealing with the Soup Nazi.

The truth is that they are already — correction, have been for over a decade — been moving R&D jobs overseas. They claim that FDA approval process is too time-consuming, so they do much research in friendlier countries. And then they bring their products back here and screw us over with ridiculously high prices, too much advertising, and fraudulent business practices. Not to mention weaseling around the FDA anyhow.

Primary the pseudo-Democrats for sure. But we cannot stop there. Let’s take our own pledge: I, for one, will not vote for a candidate who goes against core Liberal principles, even if said person is the primary winner and no matter how awful the opponent is. Better a Republican who is obviously awful and gives the voters what they vote for than a self-described Democrat that betrays the voters over lunch with a lobbyist.

Yup and when 1/2 of them turn on us (again), we’ll get them plus the ones we missed 2012, rinse and repeat and by say 2096 we might actually have a group of folks in the house (not the Senate) that actually represent the will of the American people…woohoo go team go.

Have folks seen this
Rep. Stark: ‘I wouldn’t dignify you by peeing on your leg’
http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…..-your-leg/

Suzanne Kosmas has been getting local ads sponsored by Pharma for the last few months. I guess she feels obligated to play ball. Just called her office and asked them.

“If I offered to reduce your house payment by 50%, but you pay forever OR pay off your house in 10 years with a payment that goes down slowly over that time. Which deal would you take? Mrs. Kosmas just signed a letter asking for the first one. Not too smart.”

Speaking of Waxman,

When will he be posting all of his findings on the health care, insurance and pharma industries wrt small business purges?

Oh,no!!! His name slipped by me at the first reading, had to check again.
I’m running out of heroes! Well, elected heroes that is.
FDL is filled with people who qualify as heroes. Wish a few were politically inclined.

The CPC has sent a “carrot” letter to the POTUS supporting a Public Option. Now, they need to send a “stick” letter; if a robust Public Option is not embraced by the White House and signed into law, the CPC will move to a.) defund contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and, b.) reinstitute the military draft. Contractors are too expensive to fight an open-ended war. If this is a war worth fighting, it should be done so as a shared sacrifice instead of using just 1% of the population.

Your move Mr. President.

This is such bullshit. Every caucus is being reresented on this health care bill except for the AMERICAN PEOPLE. Is this a great country or what?

And right now Obama is giving a speech telling the labor unions that he’s working hard to pass them A SHIT HEALTHCARE BILL because they worked so hard to get him elected.

Damn… Heath Shuler sucks as a Congressman as bad as he did as an NFL quarterback. That’s pretty tough. He was pretty awful.

but if the primaries fail to materialize, or the challengers are defeated, as most of them are, don’t forget the bedrock assumption of the progressive Netroots, the one that can never be disputed: You must vote Democratic, No Matter What!

this strategy has worked so well, as anyone can see – the Democrats have the White House and both houses of Congress!

so while these calls for primaries may be cathartic – after all, it is an odd numbered year – Wahington (D)’s know their left flank is covered, and after they have swatted away a couple inconvenient primaries, their most fervent supporters will be back to vote for the incumbent, because the (R)’s are running some scary hobgoblin, and one mustn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, etc.

am I wrong?

I was shocked and dismayed to see my Congressman, Hank Johnson, GA 4th, as a signatory to this letter. I immediately posted to an ongoing public health care option thread on our local community forum (hosted by a private citizen) and copied it in an email to Congressman Johnson’s office. Please be aware that I write to an audience that may not be as attentive to this issue as the average FDLer; the post FYI:

“Earlier Congressman Hank Johnson reassured us, his constituents, that he would fight for the public health care option alternative to for-profit health insurance companies. Recently, however, he has backtracked on his commitment to us. On his webpage in his comments on President Obama’s address to Congress last Wednesday, he referenced “some other mechanism” to act as a counter to being financially raped by health insurance companies or simply left to suffer or die. No effective substitute for the public option exists, and his vague reference to “some other mechanism” is frankly insulting to us, the voters of his district. Also, he signed a letter submitted by the notorious Blue Dog Democrats (i.e., Democrats who share the GOP philosophy but can’t bring themselves to man up and accept the nomenclature and identify themselves as Republicans) that demands Congress replace its costs savings requirements for Part D (drugs) Medicare with language written by PhRMA (pharmaceutical companies lobbyists association) in conjunction with Senator ($3 million from health insurance/pharmaceutical company contributions) Max Baucus of Montana (state population of 968,000; compare Dekalb County population of 740,000). Contact Scott Goldstein in Congressman Hank Johnson’s D.C. office at 202-225-1605 or call his local office at 770-987-2291 and 770-939-2016. Ask why he thinks for-enormous-profit health insurance and pharmaceutical companies suddenly have the answer to health care in our country and demand that he vote against any health care bill that does not include a public health care option available immediately to any uninsured or underinsured citizen. Will he sell out?”

I am very disappointed that Carolyn McCarthy is a signatory.

Greg Meeks is no surprise. A progressive must be found to challenge him. Money must be poured into the race. He has to go.

Bravo! more of that! the lack of such commitment and sincerity is what allows the (D)’s to continually lie and betray their faithful, trusting followers, year in year out.

Some very good progressives are signatories to this letter, which makes me leery of some of the “run ‘em out on a rail!” comments I’m seeing here. I’m not saying it’s necessarily wrong to get up in arms over the letter, just that I’d like to hear the rationale from some of the non-creepy signatories.

I can imagine an argument that Medicare recipients, pretty much by definition, don’t have all the time in the world to wait for the donut hole to dissipate according to current plans, and so the devil’s deal may at least benefit them while they’re still breathing. Or maybe that’s crap. But I’d certainly like to hear what signatories like Massa and Grayson think.

However, I am unequivocally disturbed to see PhRMA attach itself to the Baucus bill to the exclusion of less odious Obamacare alternatives.

A part of me tried to believe that Obama and Democratic leaders might have been playing, if not a desirable, at least a strategically rational game in trying to divide the anti-reform alliance between Big Insurance and Big Pharma. But if the new, “pro-reform” pharma-sponsored Harry and Louise campaigns are just going to support the Axis of Baucus and ditch the stronger (albeit still woefully inadequate) reform bills, then ObRahma and the Democratic leaders sold out for less than jack.

The Progressives must tell the Democratic Caucus and President Obama, no deal. A bad deal will be worse for the Dems than no deal. The Progressive Caucus must be willing to vote down healthcare if it is just a gift to industry that will hurt Americans — as the GOP and Blue Dogs seem to want. If there are no lines in the sand, and the president made it clear that the only line in the sand for him is deficit neutrality, then Progressive will get rolled on health care and everything else.

Caving on this will end up driving a lot of angry people who voted for Obama to the populist movement, now dominated by the Right, and many from the left to a third party.

And it’s not acceptable to vote for a House bill with a PO and then for reconciliation without one, if the bill is an industry give-away. No excuses accepted.

It seems to me that now the GOP has effectively become a white populist regional rump, the Democratic Establishment wants to make the Democratic Party the Party of Big Business and the Financial Oligarchy.