January, 05 2021, 11:00pm EDT
Why Progressives Should Care About the Commerce Secretary & Reject Raimondo
WASHINGTON
As President-elect Joe Biden fills out his Cabinet, progressives have pushed hard on most major positions, save one: Commerce Secretary. Recent reporting on the role frames the Commerce Secretary as a glorified middle-man between C-Suites and the White House.
In fact, the work of the Commerce Department impacts all Americans. Yet for decades, Commerce Secretaries have been chosen not for their policy agenda or experience, but as a reward for their massive campaign contributions and personal loyalty to the President. This practice of selling the Commerce Secretary position to the highest bidder has made it difficult to understand just how valuable a populist Commerce Secretary could be.
The benefits of what a progressive Commerce Secretary could mean to American families is what makes Axios' reporting that Rhode Island Governor and corporate insider Gina Raimondo is a frontrunner for the position so troubling. Raimondo, a former venture capitalist, is the wrong pick - and the American public agrees. According to November polling, nearly 70% of respondents oppose President-elect Biden appointing Raimondo to any cabinet position.
Biden's choice of Commerce Secretary will impact several major policy areas: fighting against climate change, pushing back on Republican gerrymandering, and preventing Big Tech from having unchecked government power. Biden must select a Commerce Secretary dedicated to fighting for progressive values and serving as an advocate for the people over big corporations.
Why Progressives Should Care About The Commerce Secretary:
- The Commerce Department houses the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). USPTO has an opportunity to use the patent system to limit Big Pharma's patent monopolies and decrease prescription drug costs. Despite Republicans like Thom Tillis stripping away the USPTO's power to withhold patents on lifesaving drugs, the Department retains enough power that the Biden-Harris Administration can and should act to increase the accessibility of generic drugs.
- The Commerce Secretary would also be charged with running the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which plays an important role in combating climate change. NOAA's research and reporting on climate change, including the National Climate Assessment and the annual Arctic Report Card, are essential tools in tracking and publicizing the impact of climate change. NOAA is also responsible for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which produces the country's definitive report on climate change, the National Climate Assessment. With a strong Commerce Secretary, the Biden-Harris Administration could use the agency to fulfill their promise of centralizing the fight against climate change.
- The Census Bureau, which is also housed in the Commerce Department, has the potential to radically transform the American electorate. Census results are used for redistricting, meaning if Biden's Commerce Secretary is unwilling or unable to fight political interference in the 2020 Census, it could hand Republicans a big win in their attempt to undercount and disenfranchise communities of color. Biden's Commerce Secretary can take several steps to fix the broken 2020 Census process, including directing the Bureau to review the data and increasing overall resources for the Bureau. The 2020 Census is a looming fight that the Biden Administration will need to take on, and a strong and committed Commerce Secretary will be necessary to protect the count.
- The Commerce Department also oversees the International Trade Administration, giving the next Commerce Secretary a significant role in shaping our trade policy. Under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, the ITA can conduct investigations on the impact of imports on national security, and recommend the use of tariffs or quotas based on the result of these investigations. The International Trade Administration also has the power to blacklist foreign companies from trade with the United States. Having a Commerce Secretary who will evaluate imports based on their impact on working families will be an essential step towards building a progressive trade policy.
Raimondo's disqualifying history of prioritizing Wall Street, lobbyists, and the health insurance industry above the public interest:
- Raimondo has a long history of prioritizing the needs of Wall Street above those of working Rhode Islanders - and helping the wealthy donors who boost her campaigns. "[Raimondo's] so-called 'pension reform' slashed school teachers and other state workers pension benefits by 3%, but increased fees paid to Gina and her Wall Street pals by 2.5% and 4% respectively." - Leading forensic auditor and former SEC attorney, Edward Siedle wrote in Forbes
- At the behest of lobbyists, she issued executive orders to shield nursing homes, hospitals, and other healthcare providers from liability. Documents show that Raimondo quickly responded to lobbyists' demands for an executive order granting them legal immunity during the pandemic, the culmination of a decade-old effort by the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). "What immunity has done is allow nursing homes to act unreasonably without accountability," said Anthony Leone, a Warwick-based personal injury lawyer who specializes in nursing homes." - The Providence Journal
- She approved steep health insurance rate hikes in the midst of the pandemic so health insurance companies could profit. "Some of the rate increases are nearly 10%, all at a time when health insurance companies have been piling up revenues with consumers using fewer services due to the pandemic" - Go Local Providence News
- In the name of a balanced budget, Raimdondo tried to strip Rhode Island's lowest-income areas of 50 percent of a key aid fund mid-pandemic. "Rhode Island's cities and towns are disputing the legality of a 50% cut by the Raimondo administration in a $12.4-million aid program for 'distressed' communities, including 'some with the highest COVID-19 case rates in the state.' The administration put city and town leaders on notice that it was likely to go ahead with the cut that Gov. Gina Raimondo proposed to lawmakers in January." --Providence Journal
- Just this year, she sought to cut $58.7 million from Medicaid, while giving $15.7 million to insurance companies. "When we're pushing brutal Medicaid cuts, we just can't afford to give extra money to insurance companies - especially not when it comes with an initiative to encourage them to cut spending on actual care." - Rhode Island State Senator Samuel Bell in Uprise RI
The Revolving Door Project (RDP) scrutinizes executive branch appointees to ensure they use their office to serve the broad public interest, rather than to entrench corporate power or seek personal advancement.
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"As CMS negotiates the prices Medicare will pay for top-selling drugs, it should take into account the billions we've already lost due to these patenting tactics," said one researcher.
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When the Inflation Reduction Act became law in 2022, it included a historic provision that gave the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) the ability to negotiate maximum fair prices for select drugs. This means that CMS now has an important tool to resist high prices imposed by pharmaceutical companies and lower the cost that Medicare recipients pay for their drugs. So far, Medicare has negotiated the maximum fair prices for 10 drugs, which will go into effect January 1, 2026.
But according to a report released Wednesday by the watchdog group Public Citizen, the manufacturers behind these drugs are able to rely on another method to protect their profits: patent abuses and evergreening tactics.
The report defines "evergreening tactics" as the practice of "patenting trivial and/or obvious modifications of existing medications to lengthen exclusivity on branded medicines."
The makers of the drugs Eliquis, Imbruvica, Jardiance, Farxiga, and Entresto, for example, obtained patents on what constitute trivial or minor changes to earlier patent claims, "such as crystalline forms of drug compounds which would be discovered and managed during routine testing that is part of the drug approval process," according to Public Citizen. These new patents allow the manufacturers to extend their monopoly on these drugs.
"Big Pharma patent abuse is cheating Medicare enrollees of more affordable drugs and costing taxpayers billions," said Public Citizen Access to Medicines program researcher Jishian Ravinthiran in a statement.
"Patent abuses enable Big Pharma companies to unfairly extend their monopolies and keep prices artificially high. As CMS negotiates the prices Medicare will pay for top-selling drugs, it should take into account the billions we've already lost due to these patenting tactics," he added.
The report makes this same point, arguing that the agency's initial offers on pharmaceuticals should take into account how long-monopoly drugs have been able to obtain longtime exclusivities on medicines by manipulating patents.
This is paramount, Public Citizen argues, given the scope of lost savings. The group estimates that Medicare will lose somewhere between $4.9 and $5.4 billion in savings that should have accrued to taxpayers if four out of the 10 drugs did not take advantage of patenting tactics, and therefore would have faced greater competition prior to negotiation.
"These lost savings are nearly as much as what Medicare is expected to save if negotiated prices go into effect on all of the selected drugs in the first year of the program ($6 billion)," according to the report.
As an example, the drug etanercept, which is marketed as Enbrel, is on the list of 10 drugs that will be subject to a negotiated cap come January 2026. Etanercept's maker Amgen did not contribute to the original research and development of etanercept, per Public Citizen, it just acquired the original maker of the drug, Immunex, in 2002.
Immunex's patent of etanercept was set to expire in 2019, but "by using abusive patent practices" Amgen was able to extend the patent protections through 2029, according to Public Citizen. Amgen was able to evade competition of two potential "biosimilar" competitors, Erelzi and Eticovo, which received FDA approval in the 2010s.
Referencing analysis done in a separate report, Public Citizen estimated "that biosimilars could have entered the market after August 2019 were it not for Amgen's unwarranted patent exclusivities, and we calculated Medicare would have spent $1,891,500,836 less on a net basis had enrollees been able to use lower-cost alternatives by the time negotiated prices go into effect on January 1, 2026."
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Accepting the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the grassroots Japanese anti-nuclear group he co-chairs, Terumi Tanaka warned on Tuesday night that the world is moving in the opposite direction than the one hibakusha—survivors of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—have demanded for nearly seven decades.
Tanaka is a co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, an organization founded in 1956 by survivors of the bombings that had killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki, with the death toll continuing to rise in later years as people succumbed to the effects of radiation.
The group accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, with the Nobel Committee honoring Nihon Hidankyo "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons."
The organization aims to maintain a taboo around the use of nuclear weapons, which have only been used in combat by the U.S. in Japan in 1945.
Tanaka warned that there are currently 12,000 nuclear warheads in the arsenals of the U.S., Russia, China, and six other countries, and 4,000 of those "could be launched immediately."
"This means that the damage that occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could be multiplied by hundreds or even thousands," said Tanaka, who is 92. "Let us all strive together to ensure that humanity is not destroyed by nuclear weapons, and to create a human society where there are no nuclear weapons and no war."
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"I hope that the belief that nuclear weapons cannot—and must not—co-exist with humanity will take firm hold among citizens of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, and that this will become a force for change in the nuclear policies of their governments."
Tanaka said that "the nuclear taboo threatens to be broken," as evidenced by Israeli Heritage Minister Amihay Eliyahu's recent comment that a nuclear attack on Gaza would be "one way" to defeat Hamas.
"I am infinitely saddened and angered" by such statements, said Tanaka.
He described his experience as a 13-year-old when the U.S. bombed Nagasaki, just a couple of miles away from his family's house, which was crushed by the impact.
He said he later found the charred body of one of his aunts and saw his grandfather close to death from the burns that covered his body.
"The deaths I witnessed at that time could hardly be described as human deaths," Tanaka said. "There were hundreds of people suffering in agony, unable to receive any kind of medical attention."
"I hope that the belief that nuclear weapons cannot—and must not—co-exist with humanity will take firm hold among citizens of the nuclear weapon states and their allies, and that this will become a force for change in the nuclear policies of their governments," said Tanaka.
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"It was their courage that enabled the [Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons] to be adopted, which represents the first progress on nuclear disarmament in decades," said Melissa Parke, executive director of ICAN, referring to the treaty that's been ratified by 73 countries.
"Listening to Mr. Tanaka describe the horrendous effects on his family and city when the Americans dropped their atomic bomb should convince world leaders they have to go beyond simply congratulating the hibakusha of Nihon Hidankyo for this award. They must honor them by doing what the hibakusha have long called for—urgently getting rid of nuclear weapons," said Parke. "That is the only way to ensure that what Mr. Tanaka and the other hibakusha have been through never happens to anyone ever again. As long as any nuclear weapons remain anywhere, they are bound one day to be used, whether by design or accident."
Jørgen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Nobel Committee, condemned the nine nuclear powers for "modernizing and building up their nuclear arsenals."
"It is naive to believe our civilization can survive a world order in which global security depends on nuclear weapons," Frydnes said. "The world is not meant to be a prison in which we await collective annihilation."
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"She is on a shamelessness tour," journalist Jeremy Scahill said of American diplomat Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
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The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is facing backlash after delivering a speech earlier this week touting the universal "right to food" as the Israeli military—armed to the teeth with American weaponry—fuels widespread and increasingly deadly hunger in the Gaza Strip.
In remarks Monday at a gathering of U.N. and civil society leaders focused on global food insecurity, Thomas-Greenfield called hunger, starvation, and famine "man-made tragedies" that "can be stopped by us."
"Let me be clear: Every human being, everywhere, has the right to food," she continued. "For the United States, this is a moral issue. And it's an economic and national security issue."
Thomas-Greenfield's speech sparked derision given the Biden administration's continued military support for an Israeli government that has been accused of wielding starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza, where—according to the latest U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization assessment—food aid has reached an all-time low under Israel's suffocating blockade.
"Hunger is a man-made tragedy that you helped make in Gaza."
Oxfam and other human rights groups have said that by arming the Israeli military as it obstructs humanitarian aid, the Biden administration is complicit in the starvation of Palestinians in Gaza and Israel's repeated attacks on aid workers attempting to feed the enclave's hungry.
"She is on a shamelessness tour in her final weeks as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.," journalist Jeremy Scahill wrote Wednesday in response to Thomas-Greenfield's speech. "She presided over numerous cease-fire vetoes as part of an administration that facilitated Israel's starvation policy against the Palestinians of Gaza. Listen to her remarks on 'hunger' in that context."
Yesterday, @USUN brought together humanitarian leaders to discuss solutions to the global food insecurity crisis.
Hunger is a man-made tragedy. But if it caused by man, that means it can be stopped by us, too.
Every human being, everywhere, has the right to food. pic.twitter.com/zczlerRHEc
— Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (@USAmbUN) December 10, 2024
Middle East scholar and analyst Assal Rad, wrote that Thomas-Greenfield's vetoes at the U.N. "have helped Israel continue its genocide and deliberately starving people."
"Hunger is a man-made tragedy that you helped make in Gaza," Rad added.
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On Tuesday, the Biden administration welcomed to the White House former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who—along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—is facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare," among other crimes.
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