The HMCS Iroquois sailed up the Hudson River and back against yesterday as part of New York's annual Fleet Week, and Raw Story was along for the ride. Click below to view the slideshow, with facts about the Iroquois, the reasons for its participation and the other ships that participated in the parade.
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Cantankerous former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson (R) lashed out once again at another notable senior organization recently, calling their criticism of his recommendation for massive cuts to Social Security "bullshit."
In a letter forwarded by the AFL-CIO Wednesday morning, the passionate Simpson expressed his displeasure with the California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) for sending out a flyer condemning his deficit reduction plan from President Barack Obama's task force he co-chaired with former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles (D).
"Your little flyer entitled 'Bowles! Simpson! Stop using the deficit as a phone excuse to gut our Social Security!' is one of the phoniest excuses for a 'flyer' I have ever seen," the Republican wrote. "What a wretched group of seniors you must be to use the faces of the very young people that we are trying to save, while the 'greedy geezers' like you use them as a tool and a front for your nefarious bunch of crap. You must feel some sense of shame for shoveling this bullshit."
Jodi Reid, who is the Executive Director of the CARA, described her organization's shock to The Raw Story exclusively at the contentious tone Simpson struck with them.
"We were taken aback by the tone and the language of the letter," Reid said. "We are very appalled that he would say the things that he said, but the core of the issue is that we oppose to some of the proposals he's been going around the country promoting."
Reid estimated that Simpson's reaction indicated something fundamentally wrong with the former Senator and his position.
"It's over the top," she said. "He has a right to disagree with us. That's his right. But it really calls into question his credibility in my opinion when this is how he reacts to somebody who opposes his position."
Simpson has been on a long-time crusade against Social Security and the organizations defending the program's current form. Last year at a deficit reduction committee hearing, he lambasted the American Association for Retired People (AARP) by calling an ad they released defending Social Security as "the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen" in his life.
Simpson also brushed off calls for him to resign from the task force fiscal commission after comparing Social Security to “a milk cow with 310 million tits.”
Despite Simpson's demands, it has been well documented that Social Security is in good financial standing with a surplus of $2.6 trillion, and has contributed nothing to the United States’ deficit. And even if there are no changes made to the system by 2036, such as a tax increase on rich individuals, Social Security would still be able to pay out 75 percent of its promised benefits.
Residents in Reidsville, North Carolina have begun receiving fliers inviting them to a May 26 Ku Klux Klan cross burning intended for "white people only."
Reidsville Police Department Captain Ken Hanks confirmed to Raw Story that people in several neighborhoods had reported receiving the invitations.
Asked if the fliers had broken any law, Hanks replied, "Not that I'm aware of," and added that the matter was not being investigated.
"I’m a little bothered by it," Annie P. Pinnix, who received a flier, told the Winston-Salem Journal on Monday.
Pinnex said her husband found the flier in their driveway. It reads:
"Join us, the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, for a rally and cross lighting, Saturday, May 26, Harmony, North Carolina. Free Admition [sic]-White People Only. No alcohol, drugs, fighting, glass bottles or weapons. Free on site camping-all major motels in area. Souvenirs. Vendors. Food and beverages for Sale. Cross lighting at dusk-a white unity event. Live country band. Security provided by LWK."
A recording on the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan "24 Hour Hot Line" confirmed the May 26 cross burning event.
"Always remember: If it ain't white, it ain't right," the recording concluded.
Earlier this month, KKK members were seen rallying in nearby Eden, North Carolina.
Listen to this audio from the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, recorded in May 22, 2012.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
(h/t: The Blaze)
A New Jersey General Assembly panel approved on Monday a bill that would lower the penalty for possessing a small amount of marijuana to a mere $150 fine for first-time offenders, essentially decriminalizing the drug by making possession a non-arrest offense.
But Gov. Chris Christie (R), who's supported drug reforms in the past, has refused to take a position on it, with an aide telling Raw Story on Monday that he won't be commenting on the proposal any time soon.
Current New Jersey law requires a fine of $1,000 and up to six months in jail for individuals charged with minor marijuana possession. Under the bill approved for consideration by the full Assembly on Monday, getting caught with up to 15 grams of pot would be more akin to receiving a traffic ticket, with second and third offenses triggering escalating fines but no arrest.
Sponsored by Assemblyman and deputy majority leader Reed Gusciora (D), the bill represents the most viable push toward sentencing reform the state has seen in a generation.
"This bill would put us in line with neighboring states like Connecticut and New York, which recently decriminalized marijuana possession," Gusciora said in a statement. "The bill recognizes the realities of our current drug laws, which are overly punitive for marijuana and taxing on our criminal justice system."
Still, it's not clear if the bill will make it out of a debate by the full assembly. But with Democrats in command of majorities in both the state's general assembly and senate, it could pass without even a single vote of support from Republicans -- except Gov. Christie, that is, whose veto would condemn the decriminalization bill to failure.
There is hope that he will listen, however.
Christie launched an initiative last year that expanded the state's drug courts and drug treatment options for repeat non-violent drug offenders. Markedly similar to bills were put forward by Democratic lawmakers in the last session, and many of them praised Christie for his support -- all of which would seem to indicate the governor's willingness to work across the aisle on drug reforms.
He's also been publicly supportive of medical marijuana, even though that bill was signed into law by his predecessor, Gov. Jon Corzine (D). After initially delaying implementation of New Jersey's medical marijuana statutes, Christie backed off, saying that he did not believe the federal government would prosecute state workers for licensing marijuana dispensaries.
Despite his eventual approval of medical marijuana, New Jersey has what's widely believed to be the most restrictive regulatory allowance for the drug, and Christie has said he'd like for it to be even tougher to obtain.
New Jersey, which has seen its budget grow from $13 billion to $30 billion in the last 11 years, was facing a mounting debt of more than $38 billion at the end of 2011, driven up -- not down -- by Christie's policies. Proponents of marijuana decriminalization say it saves taxpayers money by reducing the burden on the criminal justice system while boosting state revenues through increased ticketing of drug offenders.
Gusciora was not available for comment.
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Photo: Shutterstock.com, all rights reserved.
On April 2, 2012, the immigration rights organization Immigration Equality filed Blesch v. Holder on behalf of five married same sex couples who faced forcible separation by the government of the United States under the Defense of Marriage Act because one spouse is not an American citizen. Because DOMA prohibits the federal government from recognizing same sex marriages performed even in states where it is legal, American spouses in same sex relationships cannot sponsor their legal partners for green cards, which restricts those partners' abilities to work and puts them at risk for deportation.
Although the Obama Administration has effectively stopped deporting same sex spouses of American citizens temporarily, they will not issue those spouses green cards and, of course, any new Administration could reverse the current practice and resume the deportation of these couples. Immigration Equality estimates that there are over 35,000 such couples in the United States and that, between them, they are raising 25,000 children.
The ten named plaintiffs in the suit, including Edwin Blesch and his husband Tim Smulian, Frances Herbert and her wife Takako Ueda, Heather Morgan and her wife Maria del Mar Verdugo, Santiago Ortiz and his husband Pablo Garcia, and Kelli Ryan and her wife Lucy Truman, spoke to Raw Story last night about their relationships and what the possibility of being separated means for their lives.
Watch that video, recorded on May 17, 2012, below:
Illegally downloading pre-release leaks of major artists' albums actually "benefits" first week sales, and if used properly these types of leaks could even work as an effective promotional tool for the largest record labels going forward, according to findings in the first draft of a working paper put out this month by an assistant professor at North Carolina State University.
However, (PDF) is not necessarily the godsent revelation advocates of file sharing and copyright reform may have been hoping for. Speaking to Raw Story on Friday, Asst. Prof. Robert Hammond, a Ph.D. graduate of Vanderbilt, cautioned that his results should not be construed to contradict the economic analyses put forward by music industry lobbyists in discussions with lawmakers.
Nevertheless, his study does pack a punch: "The findings suggest that file sharing of an album benefits it's sales. I don't find any evidence of a negative effect [from piracy] in any specification, using any instrument," he wrote.
In fact, his study found that effect goes in the opposite direction: Hammond noted that the sales-boosting effect of piracy was most pronounced in cases where a major band's album had been leaked online ahead of the official release. However, the overall amplification effect was relatively small, producing about 60 additional purchases in cases where an album was leaked to pirates up to 30 days before its official release.
"My results suggest that it's possible to think of leaks as promotional activity, but more work needs to be done to understand how general that result is," he told Raw Story.
He also noted that download data he used came from a "very small" BitTorrent tracker, and that the sales boosting effects could be more pronounced if data from some of the larger trackers were examined. Despite the size of his download tracker, Hammond told Raw Story that it actually offered him more detailed data than any other prior studies on the subject, revealing a previously unidentified correlation between downloads and sales.
Cross referencing that download data with music industry sales figures, Hammond was able to pinpoint key similarities. Namely, major bands are always downloaded the most, and they almost always see the biggest sales. Hammond found that these artists also saw the greatest benefit from pre-release file sharing. While that benefit may be relatively small, the popularity trend carried over to the genre level, with with pop albums seeing the greatest benefit, whereas independent artists or newly released groups saw none.
But that's where the good news for copyright reform advocates ends: "What I find are individual downloads of an individual album are not harmful to individual sales," he said. "That does not imply that if we aggregate all the downloading and all the sales, that more downloading, for the industry, means more sales for the industry."
Hammond continued: "So much of the [recent] failed [Internet] legislation was driven by lobbying activities at the industry level. Nothing in my paper says those lobbyists and those industry level organizations are wrong in their claims. There has certainly been a steep drop in profitability in that industry. My results are on a very different question and so my ability to inform policy in that regard is somewhat limited."
That steep drop-off in profitability remains a prescient reality for record companies even despite the emergence of online services like iTunes and Spotify, which have seen subscription numbers soar in recent years. Even in countries like France, where U.S.-supported Internet restrictions have significantly cut down on piracy, the music industry's profits have continued to shrink year to year.
Explaining that the "appropriate" role of copyright is not a topic he'd care to address, Hammond added that his study simply does not speak to the "industry-level question" of piracy's potential harms. However, he noted that "individual authors who've looked at the economics question [of piracy] find that file sharing is bad."
Some of those industry analyses, however, seem to inflate the overall damages of piracy by attributing direct losses per download, as if to assume that the downloader would have otherwise purchased the item that is being shared with them. Rob Reid, creator of the online music service Rhapsody, explained in March during a speech to TED Talks why this is actually rather absurd.
"These days, an iPod classic can hold 40,000 songs… Which is to say, eight billion dollars worth of stolen media, or about 75,000 jobs," Reid said. "Now you might find copyright math strange, but that’s because it's a field that’s best left to experts."
"So, putting my work in that context says that what's good for an individual artist seems to be very different than what's good for the industry," Hammond concluded. "I imagine policy makers are more concerned with the industry than the individual artists."
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Photo: Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, who filed the first lawsuit against music sharing service Napster in 2000. Ferenc Szelepcsenyi / Shutterstock.com.
(H/T: Torrent Freak)
Update (below): Republicans stack witness panel with anti-abortion doctors
The House Subcommittee on the Constitution will stage a hearing on Thursday for a bill that would ban all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy in the District of Colombia. And much like the last major Republican hearing on female reproductive rights, women are being shut out -- or at least, one woman: the district's female congressional representative.
While committee chair Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), author of the bill being discussed, has not yet revealed who will be testifying, he has revealed who won't be. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), the sole federal representative of Washington, D.C. in Congress, said this week that she sent a letter to Franks asking to testify on behalf of her constituents, but her request was denied.
"I think this is, unfortunately, what we've kind of come to expect from the anti-choice contingent in the House of Representatives," Val Vilott, board president of the advocacy group D.C. Abortion Fund, told Raw Story on Wednesday. "I think that this proves unequivocally that they're more interested in their own anti-choice, anti-woman political agenda than they are in the well-being of residents in the District of Colombia or women."
In a prepared statement, Norton explained that she was not surprised by Franks' behavior, given that her request to testify on an earlier anti-abortion bill was also declined.
"Both bills have in common attempts to codify the far right ideology of Members of Congress and impose them with no accountability to the affected residents," she said, according to an advisory. "The post-20-week D.C. abortion ban bill targets an entire group of individuals, women who live in the District of Columbia, and their constitutional rights."
Norton added: "Using the women of one congressional district to reach for extreme encroachments on women’s reproductive rights has become a pattern of the House Republican majority, but also reflected nationwide."
Requests for more information about Thursday's hearing did not receive a response from the House committee's staff. A member of Franks' staff told Raw Story they would respond with more information on the congressman's decision to exclude Norton, but had not done so at time of this story's publication.
While federal funding for abortions is banned by law, individual states can decide whether their own tax dollars go to support women's reproductive health. DC has been doing so since Obama signed an executive order allowed them to in January of 2010. However, the District of Colombia is unique in that is not a state and falls under the jurisdiction of Congress. Congress can -- and does -- intervene in D.C.'s affairs when it sees fit. The bill Franks is an example of Congress interfering with the District's "home rule" status.
Norton said she plans to hold a press conference on Thursday afternoon ahead of the hearing, where she will be joined by D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray and Christy Zink, a George Washington University professor. Zink was included in the press conference because she had an abortion after 20 weeks due to a fetal malformation, an advisory said.
"I think that they're denying Representative Norton from even testifying proves that they have absolutely no respect for the autonomy of the District of Colombia, and that's not something they're even keeping in mind as they move forward on this bill," Vilott concluded. "It has everything to do with an agenda and nothing to do with autonomy or respect for either the district or women."
Rep. Norton's communications director was not available for comment.
Update: Republicans stack witness panel with anti-abortion doctors
Following criticism by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Franks stacked his witness list with doctors who've opined against abortion, permitting just one witness to speak against his bill. That witness is Christy Zink, who appeared with Norton in a press conference Thursday afternoon to describe her experience having an abortion after 20 weeks due to fetal malformation.
Others testifying, according to Washington City Paper reporter Shani Hilton, include the doctors Anthony Levatino, Colleen Malloy and Bryan Calhoun, none of whom practice within the District of Colombia. Each individual has published anti-abortion sentiments in the past and are expected to speak in favor of the banning abortions beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy.
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Photo: Shutterstock.com, all rights reserved.
Updated from an original version with additional source quotes.
On Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit ruled to uphold an order for shadowy campaign groups like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS to disclose their donors if they are producing federal campaign ads, or what's known to the FEC as "electioneering communications," said a report at Huffington Post. Voting 2-1, the panel struck down a request for a stay on that order, which was handed down in April by a district court judge whose aim was to close a campaign finance loophole that has allowed outside spending to run amok in this election cycle.
Rep. Chris van Hollen (D-MD) originally filed the lawsuit to compel the groups to reveal their sources of funding. His attorney, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer, said, "This case represents the first major breakthrough in the effort to restore for the public the disclosure of contributors who are secretly providing massive amounts to influence federal elections."
Wertheimer, when asked whether he believes the groups will now disclose their donors, told Raw Story,"Right now, the provision is in effect and I expect people to comply." His group's effort, he said, is part of a multi-pronged approach to hitting back against changes in election laws that decrease transparency or, like the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, grant corporations and businesses the same rights as citizens to freely donate and participate in elections.
Secret money, wielded by groups like Rove's Crossroads, the billionaire Koch brothers-sponsored group Americans for Prosperity and pro-business advocacy group the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has already had a big impact on the 2012 presidential race, with each of the Republican primary candidates' campaigns relying on powerful, secretive super PACs and other private organizations to craft their messaging and coordinate the production and deployment of political ads. Reuters reports that Rove has announced that his organization plans to spend $300 million this year attempting to unseat President Barack Obama. Just today, Crossroads GPS unveiled its new $25 million ad campaign, "Obama's Broken Promises."
The loophole in election law that has allowed this kind of unprecedented private spending is a result of a 2007 ruling by the FEC that allowed groups to keep their donors secret as long as those donors do not control of the content of a specific type of ads. “Electioneering communications” are defined as "broadcast ads that mention a federal candidate and that are run within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary." The ruling opened a floodgate through which millions of dollars of unregulated money have poured.
According to Huffington Post, "That loophole, combined with the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, led the percentage of undisclosed independent campaign spending to jump from 1 percent in 2006 to 43.8 percent in 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics."
Monday's ruling means that outside groups will no longer be able to produce these ads without revealing their donors' identities, but Wertheimer stressed in our interview that this is only one stage of the disclosure battle. He said that Van Hollen has already filed a second lawsuit to overturn another badly flawed FEC statute relating to the disclosure of contributors who fund “independent expenditures” ads that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate.
The "intervening parties" trying to block the new disclosure rulings may attempt to have the stay upheld by the Supreme Court, but the Democracy 21 president seemed to feel that the groups' chances of getting what they want were slim. In the meantime, he wants to see the organizations reveal some names.
One group, the conservative American Future Fund, has made inquiries to the FEC as to whether it can skirt disclosure rules if it drops President Obama's name and simply refers to "the administration" or "the White House." Wertheimer scoffed at the idea that this would constitute an exception to the April ruling.
"The FEC hasn't ruled on that, yet, but look," he said, "They may try to get around it, but the statute is in place. We expect them to reveal their donors."
A group that claims LGBT people can change their sexual orientation has filed a complaint against the the superintendent of the Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland over alleged sexual orientation discrimination.
Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) Executive Director Regina Griggs told Raw Story that School Superintendent Joshua Starr engaged in "hate speech" by telling students that the group's actions were "reprehensible and deplorable."
During a student meeting earlier this year, Starr was asked why PFOX flyers, which claimed LGBT people can change their sexual orientation, were sent home with students' report cards.
"I find the actions of PFOX to be repressible and deplorable," Starr explained. "We are bound by law ... to enable nonprofits to distribute flyers -- I think it's four times a year. And we can't really do that much about it unless we wanted to cut off all flyer distribution, which is an option."
"This group has figured out a way to use that law to spread what I find to be a really disgusting message, quite frankly," the superintendent said. "I'm quite upset by it in a lot of ways and I wish there were more I could do, but I am bound by the law. And as it stands it allows for this kind of action that truly is reprehensible."
In a media advisory on the Christian News Wire on Wednesday, PFOX announced that they had filed a complaint against Starr.
"Starr does not respect diversity and is creating an unsafe school environment," the complaint charged. "Superintendent Starr cannot be allowed to use his official position to display hate against any group of people because he disagrees with their sexual orientation. Starr's flagrant violation of the Nondiscrimination Policy demonstrates that he is a prime candidate to receive ex-gay tolerance training and diversity education."
Griggs told Raw Story that Starr was "totally out of line."
"He's anti-ex-gay and he does not want us in the school and he does not want our flyer distributed," she insisted, adding that her group was not intolerant of LGBT students. "People have the right to self determination. The real truth is ex-gays are hated by the homosexual community because they've become heterosexual. ... They can't play their innate, immutable game. [Homosexuality] is not innate, immutable. There is zero scientific evidence."
"We are not a therapeutic or a ministry," Griggs added. "People do change. Sexuality is fluid. How you feel today may not be how you feel tomorrow or ten years from now for that matter. So all we have ever said is that we want the same tolerance, the same equality applied across the board. ... They are anti-heterosexual, they are anti-ex-gay. They are very unhappy people or they wouldn't be out attacking others."
While Griggs claimed that materials distributed by her organization did not prosthelytize or promote reparative therapy, the group's website does offer Christian prayers for those "tired of living a gay life and wants a fresh start and a new life." The website also includes a referral directory for obtaining "ex-gay" counseling.
With medical experts saying that reparative therapy can actually be dangerous, some states like California have moved to ban the practice.
Last month, a California state Senate committee approved a bill that aims to protect citizens against “reparative” therapies intended to change the sexual orientation of LGBT people.
SB 1172 would ban children under 18 from receiving so-called “ex-gay” therapies. Therapists would also have to provide adults receiving treatment with consent forms to warn them of potential dangers.
“An individual’s sexual orientation, whether homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual, is not a disease, disorder, illness, deficiency, or shortcoming,” the bill states. “Under no circumstances shall a patient under 18 years of age undergo sexual orientation change efforts, regardless of the willingness of a patient’s parent, guardian, conservator, or other person to authorize such efforts.”
The American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Counseling Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy are all on record opposing the use of such therapies because "[s]exual orientation change efforts can be harmful," according to the bill. "The risks include, but are not limited to, depression, anxiety, and self-destructive behavior."
"The gay legislator is denying people the right to self determination because he doesn't want people to change," Griggs said of bill author Sen. Ted W. Lieu (D). "What gives him the right to tell children and teens you can't have all the information? You may be unhappy with those feelings and they're unwanted and too bad, you have no rights. What gives him the authority?"
The Montgomery County Board of Education did not respond by the time of publication.
Watch this video from the Montgomery County Board of Education, uploaded March 23, 2012.
Photo: Shutterstock
The nonprofit citizens' advocacy group Common Cause, a coalition of Democratic congressmen and a group of students are jointly filing suit in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. to declare that the Senate's filibuster rule is unconstitutional and "violates the core American principal of majority rule," according to a press release from Common Cause.
Steve Spaulding, staff counsel for Common Cause, told Raw Story that the current system serves no one and now that Republicans have "ratcheted up the obstructionism," the filibuster has gone from an "instrument of procedure to an instrument of policy," meaning that Republicans are using it in place of an actual legislative agenda, choosing gridlock over any form of compromise.
"We need 60 votes to do anything," said Spaulding, including changing the Senate's rules, which means that nothing can be done to alter the situation, either.
Common Cause joins House Democrats Keith Ellison (MN), John Lewis (GA), Hank Johnson (GA) and Michael Michaud (ME) in the suit, as well as three young people brought to the U.S. as children by their Mexican parents, and who were denied a track to citizenship when Congress filibustered the DREAM Act, stranding them in legal limbo. The attorney handling the suit is constitutional law veteran Emmet J. Bondurant, who was named one of the top ten trial lawyers in the U.S. by the National Law Journal.
Spaulding told Raw Story that the suit allows for a continued requirement of super-majority votes of 60 or more to impeach a president, ratify a treaty or override a presidential veto. Earlier this year, Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Tom Udall (D-NM) tried to lead an effort to reform the filibuster rule without a court battle, but to no avail.
Bob Edgar, president and CEO of Common Cause said that because 60 votes are needed to even get legislation debated on the Senate floor, even the most routine bills and procedures are getting blocked.
"The filibuster has even been used to block an annual defense authorization bill, with provides badly needed raises for our troops," he wrote in this morning's press release, "This is not what the founders had in mind. We have no choice but to ask the courts to step in and enforce the Constitution as a matter of law."
Attorney Bondurant said that what is needed is a rule that permits extended debate but guarantees a simple majority vote at the end of the day. The 53-page complaint(.pdf) filed today details the suit as well as the history of the filibuster from a device that guaranteed open, vigorous debate on the Senate floor, but which is new used stifle debate and block action on matters critical to the country.
The criticism from one anonymous Wisconsin Democratic official of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) not financially investing enough into the recall election against Governor Scott Walker (R) is not felt by another inside party figure Tuesday afternoon, in an exclusive interview with The Raw Story.
In an exclusive interview with The Raw Story, Zielinski indicated that the DNC has been very supportive so far in helping Walker's Democratic challenger Tom Barrett and the recall campaign's efforts. Zielinski also was not worried about any criticism of the DNC's fiscal contribution, citing the election was not tomorrow.
"We're not done yet, they have plenty of time," Zielinski said. "We know they know the stakes, and we're confident that they'll be here for us. They have been here for us in the past, and they know how important this election is in our conversation with them."
Zielinski also indicated how the party's other prominent groups have facilitated their campaign against Walker.
"We've gotten great support from organizations like the Democratic Governors Association," he said. "Certainly President Obama's campaign here in Wisconsin has been incredibly helpful. The DNC has already been helping us connect with volunteers. We're comfortable and confident that they'll help us with the research to compete."
Zielinski added that the official's criticism was not reflected of what he has witnessed with the national party.
"Media conversations, that usually happens behind close doors, an anonymous source, but we're still in conversation with the DNC," he said. "And we are confident that they'll be there for us, and we close out these last 21 days to beat Scott Walker."
A recent Rasmussen poll shows Walker leading Barrett, 50 to 45 percent.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) held a public hearing today to call for the end of legal monopolies on HIV/AIDS drugs and to introduce Senate bill 1138, which includes a $3 billion prize program for the discovery of new HIV/AIDS treatments, according to a press release from Sen. Sanders's office. The senator is hoping that the cash incentive will speed the process of discovering new drugs.
Currently in the U.S., most HIV/AIDS treatment drugs are ruinously expensive. Raw Story spoke with Sanders's chief counsel and legislative director Michael Behan, who cited the example of Atripla, a combination drug used to fight HIV. Currently, the drug retails at more than $25,000 per year per person.
"Witnesses at the hearing testified that the cost of producing Atripla is about 1 percent of that," said Behan. He said that when his office made inquiries, it found that some aid agencies, like the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), buy the same FDA-approved medication from a generic manufacturer for distribution overseas at a cost of approximately $200 per year per patient.
The companies making a generic version of Atripla still manage to make a profit, he said, because the cost of the ingredients is not very high. What consumers are paying for, including executive bonuses, marketing, and other expenses unrelated to innovation, is "our inane R and D system."
Research and development divisions are how companies come up with new drugs, but sadly, said Behan, most of what companies spend that money on are "me-too drugs," copies of medications created by other manufacturers.
Our government patent system does not allow these HIV/AIDS drugs to be manufactured and sold generically in the U.S., guaranteeing a monopoly on the treatments by pharmaceutical companies. The bill proposed by Sanders creates the $3 billion prize fund as a means of rewarding companies that discover new drugs and bring them to market.
According to this morning's press release, "The prize fund that would be created by Sanders’ bill would be supported by the federal government and private health insurers in an amount proportionate to their share of the HIV/AIDs drug market."
The legislation, Sanders believes, will more than pay for itself. The $10 billion annual cost of current AIDS drugs can be produced generically for ten percent of that. Devoting $3 billion to the prize money and $1 billion to the drugs' manufacture still forwards a huge savings, he said, to insurance companies and taxpayers.
"The bottom line," he wrote ahead of the hearing, "is that the goal of our laws and policies for medicines must be to develop drugs as quickly as possible, drugs that are the most effective we can find for the diseases people are facing, and to get them out to every person who needs them as soon as possible."
The hearing panel included Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, Knowledge Ecology International Director James Love, Washington, D.C. Department of Health Director Dr. Mohammed Akhter and Forum on Global Governance in Health research director Suerie Moon.
(image via WikiMedia Commons)
A gay supporter of former Massachusetts governor and presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney (R) has pulled his support and asked for his contribution back, the maximum allowed by law, over the candidate's stance on same sex marriage, according to CNN. Bill White, CEO of the New York City-based consulting firm the Constellations Group has supported Republican and Democratic politicians in the past, but after Saturday's commencement address at Liberty University, where Romney underlined his belief that marriage is "between one man and one woman," White has declared that he now supports President Barack Obama's re-election in November.
Obama affirmed his support of same sex unions last Wednesday, which provided an opportunity that White feels Romney missed. In a letter to the campaign, the erstwhile supporter wrote, "You have chosen to be on the wrong side of history and I do not support your run for president any longer."
When reached for comment, Jimmy LaSalvia, co-founder and director of conservative LGBT coalition GOProud told Raw Story, "I can certainly understand Mr. White's feelings on this issue, but I don’t think that most gay Americans are single issue voters. Gay Americans are living in the Obama economy just like everyone else. At the end of the day, this election will come down to the issue of jobs and the economy."
GOProud also disagreed with Romney's decision to speak at Liberty University's commencement on Saturday, accusing the former governor of kowtowing to "big government theocrats." Liberty was founded by the late evangelist Jerry Falwell, who declared in 2007 that "AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh’s charioteers … AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."
Former Romney supporter White, who is legally married to his partner under New York law, told CNN, "I feel like he's declared war on my marriage. And I could just sit back and not say anything. Or I could do something about it. And I've chosen to do something about it."
White was a maximum donor to the Romney campaign, meaning he donated $2,500, an amount that he has requested back from the candidate. Previously, he has donated to a range of Democratic and Republican politicians, from Ronald Reagan to Hillary Clinton.
"Quite frankly," he told CNN, "I was not supporting Barack Obama – I was supporting Mitt Romney. And my support is not just words or my vote, it's also putting my money where my mouth is."
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