2016 Postmortem

amborin

(16,631 posts) Sun Mar 6, 2016, 07:13 PM Mar 2016

Big Pharma Amgen LaysOff CA Workers, Opens Huge New Plant in Singapore; Donations to Podesta

Lobbyists, Huge Donations, Parties, Free Trade Agreements, US Plants Shut, US Workers Laid Off, New Offshore Plants Constructed, Lower Wage Workers Hired......

Amgen, whose headquarters is near Los Angeles and which had $15.6 billion in revenue in 2011, has a deep bench of Washington lobbyists that includes Jeff Forbes, the former chief of staff to Mr. Baucus; Hunter Bates, the former chief of staff for Mr. McConnell; and Tony Podesta, whose fast-growing lobbying firm has unusually close ties to the White House.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/us/medicare-pricing-delay-is-political-win-for-amgen-drug-maker.html

Amgen Boosts Capital Lobbying

The super-lobbyist brother of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, he runs Podesta Group — a powerhouse firm for defense contractors (Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Bechtel), pharmaceutical and health insurance giants (Merck and Blue Cross-Blue Shield) and banking and private equity firms (Well Fargo, Credit Suisse Group, KKR).

Podesta has used his D.C. mansion, famously decorated with expensive modern art, to host a Clinton fundraiser (offering fine Italian cooking by him and his brother) as well as a book party for Clinton super-PAC attack dog David Brock (co-hosted by Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias and Clinton email pal Sidney Blumenthal.) Another branch of Podesta’s portfolio: foreign governments, including several — Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Burma and the Maldives — accused by the State Department of human rights abuses. A new senior partner working on the firm’s new $1.68 million a year Saudi account: David Adams, former assistant secretary for legislative affairs while Clinton was secretary of state.

snip

Brock’s ties to the Clinton world are close and multilayered: When he held the book party for his tome, “Kill the Messenger,” last September at the home of Clinton bundler Tony Podesta (see the K Street Army), the co-hosts included Marc Elias, chief counsel for the Clinton campaign, who also serves as the lawyer for Correct the Record and allied Democratic super-PACs, and Sidney Blumenthal, Clinton’s most prolific email correspondent, who was being paid by another Brock outfit, Media Matters, as well as the Clinton Foundation.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/hillarys-financial-armada-233033648.html

These companies are also quite active in lobbying. In total they spent $161 million on lobbying efforts in 2007, with AT&T, biotech company Amgen and electric utility company Southern Co. leading the way. The Rocky Mountain News outlined each company’s lobbying interests here.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/05/corporate-sponsors-get-the-par/

And on Wednesday, the company announced it planned to lay off at least 12% of its 20,000 employees as a result. Also, it acknowledged that more cuts could occur.

Amgen now has more than two dozen politically connected lobbyists and consultants on the payroll.

They include recently departed top Pelosi staffer George Crawford, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Tony Podesta and a former GOP staffer for the House Ways and Means Committee who was a principal architect of the Medicare drug benefit program.

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/17/news/amgen17

As a senator, she (Hillary) voted in favor of free trade agreements with Singapore, Chile, Australia, Morocco and Oman.

Amgen Chooses Singapore for New Manufacturing Plant

The company will invest $200 million to build an innovative new facility, which will initially focus on expanding Amgen's manufacturing capability for monoclonal antibodies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html

Dean Baker Explains how Quid Pro Quo Works

Hillary Clinton has flipped Sanders' claim around and challenged him to show where she has reversed a position to serve the moneyed interests. This might be a useful campaign tactic, but it misrepresents the way in which money affects campaigns.

Undoubtedly there are cases where an individual or industry group promises a large campaign contribution in exchange for a politician's support on a particular issue, but this is almost certainly rare. More typically the support of politicians for moneyed interests is part of a much longer process. It's not just that the politician wants to act to curry the favor of the rich and powerful, more typically they identify with the interests of the rich and powerful so that they don't even see themselves as compromising a principle.

Trade policy provides an excellent example. During the last quarter century, the leadership of both political parties has consistently pushed trade deals that have worked against the interest of a large percentage of US workers. This was not an accidental outcome from these deals, it was by design.

Trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or most favored nation trade status for China were designed to put manufacturing workers in the United States in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world. According to standard trade theory, the predicted outcome of this competition is a loss of jobs in manufacturing and downward pressure, not only on the wages of manufacturing workers, but on the wages of less-educated workers more generally.

The wages of other workers would fall since displaced manufacturing workers would be forced to look for jobs in retail and other sectors. The increased supply of workers lowers wages in these other sectors as well. Recent research by some of the country's top labor economists confirms that trade has been a major factor depressing the wages of large numbers of workers. ....

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34830-bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-and-the-money