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theheadlesshearseman · 4 years

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As a progressive independent leftist, I'm voting Howie Hawkins of the Green Party for president. We live in an oligarchy, not a democracy; Biden and Trump are on the same team backed by the same corporate donors. I know the Green Party can't win — I'm not delusional. We vote Green for the purpose of getting the party to a goal of 5% popular vote. When this is achieved, they get federal funding and nationwide ballot access in 2024. 15% popular vote will get them a podium on the debate stage and federal funding for the 2022 mid-term elections.

Biden won't support a Green New Deal, ban fracking, publicized healthcare, police reform, and most other policies progressives stand for. We need these things for the sake of our planet and our people. We are in the middle of a God damned pandemic, and the best the Democrats could offer is the revival of the Affordable Care Act — an act which requires you to have health insurance, or else pay a penalty fee for not having insurance. How are so many unemployed Americans supposed to pull off getting insured? Due to the government mandate, companies have consolidated and the market is monopolized, causing rates to go parabolic. But it's okay because pre-existing conditions are covered. That's great, but I still can't afford my medication for chronic asthma. Thank goodness for the black market! We don't see health insurance; we need health ASSURANCE — publicized healthcare (Medicare4All) is how you guarantee everyone, employed or not, rich or poor, is taken care of.

This notion democracy will cease to exist if Trump is re-elected is a farce, regurgitated by every panicked Biden voter. We have a system of checks and balances in place to prevent his abuse of power, yet media outlets are planting these thoughts of paranoia into the general public, and it's sick. Conversely, the Trump campaign tells their constituents that Biden is a radical leftist Marxist whose constituents hate America. Both sides use fear, division, and hate to keep you voting within the two-party duopoly. Either way, THEY win.

Most of the news outlets in the world are owned by 6 corporations. (It was just 24 corporations back in the 90s.) Each media company shares a board member with a big pharmaceutical company board member. Their goal is to augment their bottom line at our expense by lobbying to politicians of both major parties, donating to them in exchange for policies that further increase their bottom line. Remember in the late 90s/early 2000s when we started seeing ads for prescription drugs on TV for the first time? That's when the media company consolidation started growing.

These big corporations have a lot to lose if a third party gets elected. That's why they do anything in their power to sway public opinion via the news media, making you think you only have a choice between Republican and Democrat, shaming you from dare voting a third party for their ideals because "they can't win," swaying the public to vote "Gucci brand politicians" over that unknown brand at the store you keep passing up, but if you actually tried it, you wouldn't go back to "Kraft". You are going to get the same result with Biden or Trump.

I'm disgusted with Trump privatizing national park land for oil drilling. Native American lands are encroached upon and exploited by big oil. Look at the Keystone Pipeline; that happened with Obama at the helm. When Biden gets elected, he will perpetuate the abuse of our lands that Trump has perpetuated from previous administrations. Colonialism forges onward in the 21st century with an unnecessarily large military budget — $750 billion.

Both are rapists, both are racists, both perpetuate corporate control and exploitation of we the people, and I'm sick and tired of it. Plus, what Biden did to Tara Reade is utterly despicable and disgusting, but what's more disgusting is how people still support Biden after Reade has provided more supporting circumstantial evidence for her rape claims than any of Kavanaugh's accusers.

You have forfeited your integrity to say, "me too" and, "believe women" if you support Biden (and especially if you support Trump) because unlike the line-in-item veto power of the presidency, as voters, you, by default, have to endorse the entire package because you GET the entire package: a 47-year career politician who digitally raped a young intern in '93 that won't assure healthcare for the American people during a pandemic, won't ban fracking despite our climate crisis, authored the '94 crime bill responsible for the mass incarceration of back people and people of color for petty drug charges, responsible for the bank bill that pushed an entire generation of Americans into deep abysmal student loan debts due to high interest rates that his big bank donors profited off of while claiming to have no empathy for millennials who have it hard and statistically own only 4% of the nation's wealth even as the largest generational member of the American population, now running off a campaign of being the voice of reason, the light, the good, and not being Trump.

This IS the reality of it. In a way, I do live in an alternate reality from the rest of the JoeBlowHards that go through life not realizing there is a veil over them. I don't fear a Trump re-election, yet Biden is ahead by 10+ points in the polls, mostly by fools who think you can push Biden, a 47-year bought and paid for politician, left once elected. To push a politician left, you need leverage in the form of dollars — billions and billions and BILLIONS of dollars. What are you gonna do, squirt shampoo on a piece of progressive legislation to get the hair sniffer to sign it?! 😂

Biden CANNOT be pushed left for progressive policies because the very policies you support would directly undermine the big industries that are lining the pockets of the Republicans AND Democrats: Green New Deal VS Oil and Gas; Medicare for All VS Big Pharma; Free College Tuition VS Big Banks, etc. If you want ANY of these policies, we HAVE TO break through the two-party duopoly's choke-hold on the American people.

I feel it would be worse for Biden to get elected because I guarantee you, if he does, people will go back to sleep on all that is wrong with our country. With Trump in office, everything is happening in front of the curtain. With Biden, "nothing will fundamentally change" as he closes the curtain in front of the dark doings of the United States, continuing Trump's destruction behind the scenes. At least with Trump, since he attracts the spotlight, we can keep an eye on our oppressors. With Trump, people will stay mad, and we need to stay mad, not go back to sleep. Oh, and with a Biden victory, I will, once again, get charged a penalty for not having health insurance for my PRE-EXISTING CONDITION that I couldn't afford in the first place.

Disclaimer: I wasn't paid by Russia to type this. And if you're a Republican reading this and sick of Trump, come to the Green side; we support the second ammendment! When you swing far enough left, you get your guns back. ;)

Feel free to share and discuss.

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science-lings · 5 years

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all the multiples of 3.

oof you asked for it...

3: 3 Fears: The dark, the unknown, shots/ doctors

6: 4 turns off: not practicing basic hygiene, supports the ideas of team cap, (Sorry I wouldn’t fuck you if you support that kind of mentality) uhhh donald trump supporters, and Nazi’s

9: My best first date: I have never really been on a date, no one likes me that much lol

12: What time were I born: At like 9 in the morning

15: Favorite quote: Demons run when a good man goes to war (the whole poem)

18: Do I use sarcasm: I don’t know... do I?

21: Shoe size: Like a 7 1/2 wide idk

24: Favorite style of clothing: Graphic tshirts, flannel, leather jackets and sweatpants. I also like heeled boots.

28: Favorite movie: That’s hard... into the spider-verse is up there with iron man 3, the batman lego movie, all of the x-men movies (esp first class and apocalypse)

31: How I feel right now: Sick, I’m home from school with a fever and I lost my laptop stylus... :(

34: My relationship with my parents: Both are manipulative but my mom is at least nicer and not a narcissist.

37: Tattoos and piercing I want: I like space and nerdy stuff so I want to get something like that. I also really like the style of Suzy Berhow's tattoo sleeve.

40: Do I ever get “good morning” or “good night ” texts? HA no.

43: How long does it take me to get ready in the morning? Like ten minutes at most.

46: If I were drunk & can’t stand, who’s taking care of me? My dog or my brother, I have no friends

49: Am I excited for anything? Captain Marvel, A4, and the next spiderman movie.

52: When was the last time I hugged someone? I don’t remember but probably an awkward one from my grandmother

55: What is something I disliked about today? I’M SICK AND I LOST MY STYLUS

58: What’s my strangest talent? I don’t have one.

61: What was the last lie I told? Probably that I was doing homework.

64: Do I believe in magic? No, but I believe in paranormal shit

67: What was the last book I’ve read? The Magnus Chase series.

70: What was the worst injury I’ve ever had? I got pneumonia and for some reason, my ankle got all fucked up and I couldn’t walk

73: Is there anything pink in 10 feet from me? A package of strawberry sour patch kids.

76: What do I think is Satan’s last name is? Trump

79: What would I want to be written on my tombstone? She died as she lived, fucking depressed as shit.

82: If the whole world were listening to me right now, what would I say? FUCK YOU

85: What would be a question I’d be afraid to tell the truth on? Anything intimate or that would hurt someone's feelings.

88: Bought condoms? Nope

91: Kissed a boy? Not that I remember.

94: Had job? I tutored swimming lessons for a while and did some babysitting and petsitting.

97: Had sex in public? Nah

100: Did drugs? Other than prescription, no

103: Am I a vegetarian/vegan? I was for a bit but I’m too lazy to continue.

106: Been to a wedding? Yeah, my cousins and his wife

109: Been outside my home country? A whole lot. First Japan and China, then England, Wales, and Ireland, then Mexico Honduras and Belize

112: Broken a bone? Nope

115: Been in airplane? More times than I can count.

118: Had a crush on someone of the same sex? Yup.

121: Lost my virginity before I was 18? Nope.

124: Voted in a presidential election? I just missed the last one by like a month.

127: Met someone famous? not really but I’ve seen famous people at comic con including John Barrowman in a skimpy wonder woman outfit and sparkly heels.

130: Been fishing? Yeah when I was like ten, It sucked.

133: Broken a mirror? Probably, I’m clumsy sometimes.

#long post #ask gay #ask games #Anonymous

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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Psychedelics Are a Billion-Dollar Business, and No One Can Agree Who Should Control It

In March, David Bronner, the "Cosmic Engagement Officer" of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, wrote that it was “time to publicly call out the for-profit psychedelic pharma company Compass Pathways, for their monopolistic and shady behavior.”

Bronner alleged that George Goldsmith, CEO and co-founder of mental health company Compass Pathways, had been reaching out to researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) “in an attempt to drum up concern and mobilize opposition to implementing 109 in Oregon." (Oregon Measure 109 passed in November 2020 and outlines a path to legalizing psilocybin services in Oregon by 2023.)

This was the latest in a series of concerns voiced by various actors that Compass Pathways is attempting to exert singular control over psilocybin-assisted therapy. In 2018, Olivia Goldhill wrote in Quartz that the company had left consultants and donors feeling dismayed when it transitioned from a nonprofit to a for-profit. Since then, there have been investigations into its patents on synthetic psilocybin and questions raised about the implications of its other patent applications, which include claims on many aspects and applications of psilocybin-assisted therapy.

Bronner's statement on Goldsmith’s purported interference in Oregon highlighted what will likely be another growing tension in the mainstreaming of psychedelics more generally, outside of debates on intellectual property and ethical business models: whether psychedelics will be accessed through a medical model via Food and Drug Administration approval, or through legal and regulated access through state (or federal) laws, like the one in Oregon.

Many states are passing or considering psychedelic decriminalization or legalization. Simultaneously, FDA-approved psychedelic-assisted therapy is within reach—as close as around two years for psilocybin and MDMA. How these two paths will intersect, interact, or interfere with each other is an open question, but proponents of both worry that one might somehow harm, or even preclude the existence of, the other.

Psychedelics researchers and advocates have made great strides in regaining credibility for the drugs as subjects of research, potential treatments for a variety of conditions, and even a shrewd investment. Psychedelic companies, along with their intellectual property, are burgeoning into a billion-dollar industry. Some in the psychedelic community worry that decriminalization or state-regulated legal access to the compounds will either get left behind and forgotten or be actively prevented by those wanting to protect the for-profit industry.

Until now, what exactly Goldsmith was emailing to researchers in Oregon was unknown outside of what was outlined in Bronner's post. Through a Public Records Law request, Motherboard obtained an email that Goldsmith sent to a professor of psychiatry at OHSU on November 19, 2020. In it, Goldsmith summarized what Compass Pathways does and noted, “We are also the largest funder of psilocybin preclinical and clinical research.”

He emphasized that psilocybin therapy would be best developed in the medical model. “While we agree that there is a need for innovation in mental health care, we firmly believe that this should be developed along existing regulatory standards with FDA oversight,” he wrote. “Clearly, a majority of Oregon voters think differently.”

Email sent by George Goldsmith obtained through Public Records Request.

“Monopolistic behavior that attempts to block other entities from bringing medicines to market, or even worse, shut down Oregon’s Measure 109 model and attempt to lock up psychedelic therapy inside the FDA medical pharma model for narrow qualifying diagnoses only, is harmful to the healing we as a movement want to bring to the world,” Bronner wrote.

Goldsmith told Motherboard that hindering 109 was “not our intention ever, to be very clear." “What we saw in Oregon was simply—I said, 'Well, this is a really interesting experiment.' That's what Oregon is," Goldsmith said. "And being somebody who's trained and has a worldview like I do, when I hear the word experiment, I think about data. And so I reached out to the head of psychiatry department at OHSU and said, 'I'd love to talk.' And that was the content. It wasn't about derailing."

Goldsmith said the email was not intended as an interference in Oregon. “I just wanted to have a conversation. But I guess that’s not allowed.”

That's a pretty significant difference in interpretation of both the content and intent of one email, an example in miniature of the debate over access to psychedelics in the same way the many complaints against and defenses of Compass Pathways mirror larger issues. Is the opinion that psilocybin (and other psychedelic treatments in the future) should be kept confined to the medical system about the safety and protection of vulnerable patients, like those with treatment-resistant depression or PTSD? Or is keeping psychedelics in the medical model about forcing people to access psilocybin through a specific company’s products and services? These are questions on which people have staked out positions while seemingly ignoring the common ground between them.

The dynamics of the debate are plain enough. Goldsmith is not alone; other notable figures at for-profit psychedelic companies have publicly said that the medical model is the appropriate avenue for psychedelic-assisted therapy for mental illness. This has led community psychedelic platforms to respond in kind, saying that clinical trials and the medical model are latecomers to psychedelic knowledge, trumped by indigenous, underground, and recreational use—and are not the best way forward.

Both of these positions are extreme, though. There isn't any reason that medical and legal access necessitate a "pick or choose" situation. They can, technically, coexist to create an array of psychedelic services, available to a wide spectrum of people. This will require good faith behavior on all sides: from people accepting that others will access psychedelics in ways that may not resonate with them (like in a doctor's office), to companies staking claim in a new industry accepting that their profit margins might be smaller when there's a diversity of places to take psychedelics.

There are legitimate reasons to want certain groups of people to have as much as support and safety as possible if they want to try psychedelic-assisted therapy. This could mean directing them to the medical model outright. But there should be accountability and ethics built into whatever models come into existence—medical or legal.

The medical and legal models will share many important considerations concerning safety, ethics, and training of practitioners. They will both need to grapple with accountability and consent, and be wary of healers—medical professionals or otherwise—who veer into guru territory and make false promises and cross boundaries. Both models will need to figure out how each individual will get the support they need—before, during, and after an experience— depending on what exact issue they are seeking psychedelics for. The more minds and bodies we have thinking about these issues honestly and critically, the better.

It's not paranoia when advocates for legalized psychedelics claim that those in the for-profit space are pushing for medicalization alone. Christian Angermayer, the founder of Atai Life Sciences and a funder of Compass, said in a recent interview with Business Insider that "At Atai, we are doing medical drug development and running FDA trials. There's no consumer aspect and we want these drugs approved for medical use only."

(The unspoken irony here is that Angermayer had a life-changing psychedelic experience in a country with legal, regulated psychedelic access, yet he now insists on the medical route being the ideal option. Lars Wilde, co-founder of Compass, has referenced a similar legal psilocybin experience.)

The white paper Goldsmith attached to the email to the OHSU psychiatrist contained several mentions of the medicalization-versus-legalization issue. One of the sections is titled "Ensure that psilocybin therapy follows the evidence-based, medical route to patients, not the legalization path," with elaboration that, “There is an increasingly vocal campaign to introduce legalized psilocybin therapy through licensed facilities in the U.S. Legalization of psilocybin mushrooms in this way carries a high level of risk and would not meet the needs of the majority of patients suffering with TRD.”

On its website, Compass also writes that to make sure psilocybin therapy is safe and effective in patients, "psilocybin therapy needs to be approved by medical regulators, not legislators." (The emphasis is in the original.) Tom Insel, former director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health and advisor to Compass Pathways, recently told Time Magazine that he too was concerned about medical research being "overtaken by other events," like the "active movement to decriminalize psilocybin." "He worries what might happen if they become widespread outside the clinic," journalist Adam Piore wrote.

Regarding the white paper, Goldsmith said when reached for comment that the paper was referring to "well-defined, vulnerable patients who have very few care options." He further explained, "Our white paper focused on that population, and we expressed our concern that there is not enough evidence for broad public access at this point.".

But when these sentiments are combined with the alarm around the number of psychedelics patent filings in the past year, it paints the picture of a future in which psychedelics will be accessible only through a prescription and a doctor—which is not what many in the community want.

“People are worried that if psychedelics are medicalized, they'll fall into this category where their medical use will be permitted, but not if they're used outside of medicine, and that they will not be decriminalized,” said Ismail Ali, the policy and advocacy counsel at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). “I don't think it's an irrational fear.”

In an interview with Motherboard from June, Goldsmith said that he and Compass co-founder Ekaterina Malievskaia were not “representing the medical industrial complex” but that what they have focused on from the very beginning is how to bring psychedelic therapy to a “specific group of people in a specific way"—namely, people with treatment-resistant depression who are treated by mental health professionals with their formulation of synthetic psilocybin.

“That doesn't mean that there aren’t other ways,” Goldsmith said. “It just means that what we're doing for our mission is what we're doing. It's not that it's our way or the highway.”

Goldsmith said that in his view, regulation exists to ensure that these vulnerable populations aren't taken advantage of with claims that can't be backed up by research. “They often view it as a last resort,” Malievskaia said. “And if this fails, then there's nothing else left. And so we need to be very careful how these patients are supported. We pay particular attention to how patients are prepared, how we test for safety, how we assess potential disappointment if there is a low-intensity dose or if there is no effect.” Compass' randomized controlled phase IIb study is nearly completed, and it will soon begin phase III. Alongside the nonprofit Usona Institute, they are the closest to having the data needed to apply for FDA approval for psilocybin-assisted therapy.

Malievskaia also said that in order for patients to get reimbursement through public or private health insurance, psychedelic therapy will have to go through FDA approval and enter the medical framework. This is a magnanimous goal. But as Motherboard has noted before, FDA approval doesn't guarantee insurance coverage—especially in the United States, where insurers are notoriously bad at covering psychotherapy in-network.

I asked Goldsmith, “It would be comforting for people to hear that Compass is not against legalization. Is that accurate?”

Goldsmith said, “It’s accurate. We are very articulate, I think, about the risks of legalization. But it's going to happen. I'm a big, big fan of some key principles in life. One of them is don't argue with reality. And I think this is the direction of travel. It's going to happen. I hope it happens. And fewer people are harmed than more. But there will be casualties, there are casualties everywhere. And we just take that risk.”

In response to a request for comment just before publication, Goldsmith confirmed what he told Motherboard in June. "As I’ve said before, we are not trying to stop legalisation," he said. "Voters have spoken in Oregon. I stand by my view that even in this legalisation setting, evidence matters for public safety. I think more would be better than less. That was why I reached out to Dr. Keepers. I wanted to talk with him to see what research could be done to help create this evidence base."

He also said it's likely that both models of access will coexist. "I think both legalisation and medicalisation have a responsibility to minimise risk through evidence and evidence-based therapy approaches," Goldsmith said. "And that there needs to be some way to ensure accurate and timely feedback on adverse events to ensure transparency. Unfortunately, they will happen in both settings. So, that is the basis of my comment about how we all minimize possible casualties. "

FDA-approved drug therapies can exist alongside non-therapeutic versions of the same drug. One example is omega-3 fatty acids. They can be purchased at any health food store, but they’re also an FDA-approved therapy called Lovaza.

Mason Marks, the project lead of the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation (POPLAR), said that THC, the active compound in cannabis, is another. It’s an ingredient in medical products, and non-FDA-approved products sold in stores with state laws regulating medical and adult cannabis use.

Now, companies that have patents on psilocybin-related inventions could, in theory, file infringement claims against people who are providing psilocybin services in states that allow for regulated access. But despite the incredible publicity around psychedelic patents being filed, Marks said he has no reason to believe they’re being filed any faster than in other fields. “Though it does seem as though they are appearing faster than they were a year or two ago,” he added.

It is common for companies to blanket a field with patents. There are companies that have hundreds of patents on a single device or medical treatment, like AbbVie, which obtained over 100 patents on its product Humira, an immunosuppressive drug. It will be important to keep an eye on the volume of psychedelic patents, and what they claim ownership over, to know if they could infringe on state-regulated access in any way.

“It's difficult to say for sure, but I would think that as the number of patents granted increases, and the number of stakeholders seeking patent protection rises, the higher the odds that infringement suits will be filed against companies and practitioners in state- and federally-regulated areas of the emerging field," Marks said.

One important legal difference will be in scheduling. The FDA approval process is different from the controlled-substance scheduling process, Marks said. In states like Oregon where psilocybin becomes regulated, it could be rescheduled on the state level but remain a Schedule I controlled substance federally until that changes via Congress or the DEA.

If psilocybin-assisted therapy became FDA-approved, it would likely only be the approved formulation and methods of administration that would be rescheduled. Non-medical, non-FDA approved psilocybin would probably remain in Schedule I.

Still, Marks said he sees no reason why state regulation of psilocybin services cannot exist alongside FDA approved medical therapies that include psilocybin. “They serve different purposes and can coexist harmoniously," he said. "Some stakeholders do not want them to coexist. But a diversity of approaches to psilocybin regulation and utilization is a good thing.”

A lot of the wariness around an insistence on the medical model comes down to questions about motive. Are FDA approval, patents, and the medical model tools to ensure safety and efficacy for vulnerable people, while being a bridge to wider access for others? Or are they tools for profit margins?

Distrust and apprehension has led to some backlash, though, toward the medical model overall. In May, Alexander Beiner, the co-founder of Rebel Wisdom, wrote an article in Chacruna posing the question, “Are Clinical Trials the Only Legitimate Path to Accessing Psilocybin?”

“We’re in the middle of a psychedelic turf war,” he wrote. “With psychedelic medicine on the cusp of going mainstream, an increasing number of players are vying for narrative control.”

Beiner was responding in part to a paper from King's College London psychedelics researcher James Rucker, who wrote that it was premature and unethical for psychedelic retreats to promise therapeutic outcomes to their visitors. “To determine whether a drug should become a licensed medicine, an objective process of scientific enquiry is required,” wrote Rucker and his co-author Allan Young. “This usually consists of a set of gold-standard clinical trials, defined by international agreement. In contrast to the history of psilocybin use, clinical trials, in their modern and robust forms, have taken place only for the past 50 years or so.”

Beiner wrote that while he agreed it wasn't right to use early data to market a psychedelic retreat, he took issue with their claim that clinical trials were the best way to usher psilocybin into the world. “Psilocybin is not a new drug," Beiner wrote. "It is a pre-existing molecule with a rich history of Indigenous use, particularly among the Mazatec, and an important history of underground and countercultural use as a spiritual sacrament or therapeutic tool."

Bia Labate, an anthropologist and executive director of Chacruna, has written similarly that “Alcohol and tobacco did not have to go through [clinical trials]. Statistically-sound clinical trials were introduced in the 1940s to ensure the safety and efficacy of new drugs and treatments. This is, of course, not the case with psilocybin or ayahuasca. Epidemiology, or the collective human experience of consumers of these substances, simply trumps clinical trials.” Beiner wrote that psychiatrists were “arguing that their profession should gatekeep therapeutic approaches using a molecule with thousands of years of existing human use.”

Beiner ended his essay by saying, “We do not have to choose between clinics and churches; we can have both. But we won’t get there by trying to defend our own turf.” But tearing down clinical trials which try to assess the safety and efficacy for specific patient groups only furthers a turf war.

Clinical trials, while admittedly imperfect, are used to test whether a substance has a benefit for a specific group of people, and what dose is safe and efficacious if so. Society has an ethical obligation to check to the best of its ability that a drug is likely to have benefit for a patient group, which is especially important when that group is a vulnerable one, like those with mental illness. No one is using alcohol and tobacco therapeutically; that's why we don't need clinical trials for those substances.

Matthew Johnson, the associate director of the Johns Hopkins Center on Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, said that most psychedelic researchers actually don’t fall into the camp of wanting to stop recreational use, and most aren’t against measures like decriminalization. “Generally, the criminalization of drugs is just a horrific idea,” Johnson said. “We have lots of public health data to support that. I don’t think my opinion on that is radical at all.”

But even if psychedelics had never been made illegal in the 1960s, we would need to develop them through medical psychotherapeutic models if we wanted to use them as medicine in some contexts, said Johnson. “You still need to work out their parameters and know how to use them effectively,” he said.

Ali thinks that clinical trials are important for policy change, but that one way to address concerns like Beiner and Labate's is to incorporate other kinds of knowledge, like Indigenous wisdom, and take them as seriously as we do RCTs—but not to say that clinical trials aren't needed. “I think to say that we shouldn't do clinical trials or shouldn't have medical access is very naive,” Ali said. “This idea that we should take one of them out to accommodate the other misses a really big point and potential for actually creating broad access."

Ben Sessa, an addiction psychiatrist and chief medical officer at AWAKN Life Science, has a more practical take: “The question of why you need clinical trials to get DMT licensed is not a very interesting question, because the simple answer is because you need clinical trials to get any medicine licensed,” he said. “As far as the FDA is concerned, LSD is no different from penicillin. It's just a drug. It has to go through phase studies to show efficacy. You have to jump through these hoops. If you collect all that data and you demonstrate safety and efficacy, it will be licensed. But it won't just because it's magical and spiritual.”

One of the other arguments in Rucker and Young's paper was that if psilocybin is offered outside of a medical context, and something goes wrong, it could undermine the credibility of the drug, and hamper researchers’ attempts at making it a legitimate medicine.

This is a semi-legitimate concern. As journalist Michael Pollan wrote in 2019, “The history of psychedelics has been marked by periods of both irrational exuberance and equally irrational stigmatization.” He cautioned that ballot initiatives “may not be the smartest way to get there. We still have a lot to learn about the immense power and potential risk of these molecules, not to mention the consequences of unrestricted use. It would be a shame if the public is pushed to make premature decisions about psychedelics before the researchers have completed their work.”

But legalization can also do the reverse. Ali said that the medical model is often the way that substances are introduced to the mainstream, and could lead to federal de-scheduling. “It’s absolutely true that if people were starting with the conversations around decriminalization or even fully legal regulated access, I don't think there would be the momentum that there is today,” he said.

“Some parts of the psychedelic community are saying, ‘It’s going to become exclusive,’” Sessa said. “That’s nuts. It's the current situation that's exclusive. Psychedelics are used by a fairly small section of people—mostly white, middle-class trustafarians who can afford to fly off to Peru and have ayahuasca from their shaman. The majority of people don't use these drugs because they're illegal and they're banned. By medicalizing them or corporatizing them or whatever you want to call it, we are increasing accessibility.”

As much excitement and focus has been on psychedelic research and the medical path, state-level psychedelic regulation has arrived, and the two need to contend with one another. The best approach to ensure a plurality of safe and ethical access points will be soliciting input from a wide variety of experts on psychedelics from all walks of life, and allowing a diversity of safe models to exist. In short, the best way for the medical and legal models to co-exist is to prove that they can—and it's Oregon we'll be looking to for a first example.

What Oregon Measure 109 outlines is legal access to "psilocybin services," which may or may not include therapy. Because of this, it’s the first example where a variety of different uses for psilocybin will try to exist in the same place, both medical and nonmedical, and the system being set up will attempt to triage people to the right level of care—a model that could be emulated on a larger scale if it works. In our Western culture, there are many people who will feel more comfortable seeking out a doctor in a clinic, a person with a medical degree. They deserve the right to do so just as much as a person who wants to seek out a shamanistic or peer-supported experience instead. Oregon’s Psilocybin Advisory Board has been reviewing evidence for the safety and efficacy of psilocybin from scientific, historical, and Indigenous sources. It published its first report in July.

“There is a tension between the idea of medical psychiatrists as the gatekeepers, and on the other extreme, that psilocybin should just be freely available,” said Atheir Abbas, a neuroscientist at OHSU who is on the Psilocybin Advisory Board but was sharing his own opinions only. “The Oregon model described in the measure is, I think, an attempt to integrate all these views.”

In Oregon, people will be able to apply for licenses to offer psilocybin services, but the bill doesn’t specify that a person will have to be an MD or even a psychologist, said Abbas. In practice, this means that there will be a lot of autonomy from individuals in the kinds of services and expertise they want to legally access. There will also be some form of systematic method built into the system whereby people with specialized and complex histories will be directed to those with the proficiency to care for them, alongside a baseline level of accountability for all.

Tom Eckert, the co-founder of the Oregon Psilocybin Society (OPS) and one of the chief petitioners Measure 109, said that’s one of the most important questions they’re working on. “What’s the best way to match providers and facilitators with clients in such a way that their needs are met and the safe spaces are created for a variety of different potential presentations?" he said. "That's a really important question, and it's not a single solution.”

Relatedly, figuring out how the licensing and training will take place, and what the training will contain, is one of the important pieces of the puzzle that the board will be hashing out over the next two years.

Sessa doesn’t think that just anyone who loves psychedelics can step into that role. “I get a lot of people writing to me saying, ‘Ben, I want to be a psychedelic therapist.’ And I say, ‘Why?’ And they say, ‘I love taking LSD.’ Well, that's not really why you should want to be a psychotherapist. You should want to be a part of this because you love working with people with depression, people with PTSD, because you've spent years training as a doctor or nurse or a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist or counselor or social worker. You understand consent and confidentiality. You understand the neurobiology. You understand all the legal aspects of it. You understand the patient clinician relationship. You are supervised by a regulatory body. Just enjoying psychedelics doesn't turn you into a clinician.”

Ali said that he thinks that the more sensitive, unstable, or complex a person’s diagnosis is, the more likely it is that they will need specialized care. The more likely someone is to have an adverse event, the better it is there are trained and specialized people present who have accountability.

“Conversely, I think a healthy, normal person—and I don't love the term normal here—but someone who may be average, does not have a diagnosis, is otherwise stable in various ways, they may not need the same kind of highly specialized care,” Ali said. If this kind of triage can be achieved, it could end up bolstering medical access, and ensuring that those people who might need extra support of the medical infrastructure find their way there.

Sessa said that he foresees a future of a variety of access points, as long as people can accept that all these points won't interfere with each other. “I can see psychedelics being available in nonclinical populations for personal growth and development and also for fun and festivals," he said. "And I can see clinics providing medical protocols managed by clinical teams for specific diagnoses. And I think people will go on to do both.”

In Oregon, Eckert said doesn’t feel a division between the medical model and legal access. “I don't participate in divisive language on any of this, because my vision has always been to see a unified platform that is nuanced, that can have flexibility within it to meet a variety of means,” Eckert said. “I'm looking at Oregon as a potential platform that addresses concerns ranging from preventive to wellness to therapeutic to medical.”

Follow Shayla Love on Twitter.

Psychedelics Are a Billion-Dollar Business, and No One Can Agree Who Should Control It syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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Who Led Congressional Republicans In Creating The Contract With America

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Who Led Congressional Republicans In Creating The Contract With America

The Maine Senator Was Never An Independent Force In Washington But Reporters Concocted That Myth To Justify Their Phony Narratives

In 1997, only seven months into the job as a senator, Susan Collins of Maine got what many of her colleagues wait years for: a glowing profile in the SundayNew York Times Magazine. It described “a prim, earnest woman with a schoolmarm’s reserve” who had embraced moderation as her guiding philosophy. Collins, from the moment she arrived in Washington, was seen as a swing vote: A lobbyist wanted her to protect Nike’s factories in Asia, a Roman Catholic bishop called to lobby her on abortion, and the architects of new campaign finance legislation asked her to co-sponsor their bill. This “middle-of-the-roader from little Caribou, Maine,” was having a moment, theTimeswrote. “It is the moderate Republicans who hold the balance of power in Washington now.”

Of course, moderates did not hold the real power in Washington in 1997. Newt Gingrich was two years into a speakership that would transform American politics. Between 1994 and 1999, he unveiled his “Contract With America,” shut down the government for 21 days, and led the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in a frantic, destabilizing period that would galvanize the right and forever change how business was done on Capitol Hill. By the end of his tenure, Gingrich had sidelined the establishment that once ruled politics, and yet mainstream reporters continued to view the system as they always had: as an institution controlled by its most moderate members.

Meredith Shiner covered Congress between 2009 and 2016.

How Did The Contract With America Reflect The Ideals Of Republican Congressional Candidates In 1994

Who are the experts?Our certified Educators are real professors, teachers, and scholars who use their academic expertise to tackle your toughest questions. Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team.

Much of the well touted “Contract for America” sought to create a less interventionist role of government. This ideal was represented by much of the Republican leadership and filtered into the candidates selected to run in 1994. It sought to redefine government and change “the old ways.” An example of…

Trump Is Starting To Put Together His Own Contract With America And Hes Teaming Up With Newt

The 45th president has sat down with the former speaker, as well as Mark Meadows and Lindsey Graham in recent weeks to begin crafting a policy document.

Newt Gingrich, seen here in 2020, was the driving force between the Republican election triumph in 1994. | AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis

05/26/2021 08:52 AM EDT

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Acid wash jeans, scrunchies, and… Newt Gingrich. Fashion from the ’90s is having a comeback, and so too is the ’90s Republican playbook for how to win back congressional majorities.

With an eye toward winning back the House and Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, former President Donald Trump has begun crafting a policy agenda outlining a MAGA doctrine for the party. His template is the 1994 “Contract with America,” a legislative agenda released ahead of the midterm elections in the middle of President Bill Clinton’s first term. And, as a cherry on top, he’s teaming up with its main architect — Gingrich — to do it.

In recent weeks, Trump sat down with the former House speaker as well as his former chief of staff Mark Meadows and Sen. Lindsey Graham at his private Mar-a-Lago club to begin crafting the document, according to a source familiar with the meeting.

The group is still just beginning to hammer out the details of what a Trumpified Contract might look like. But it is likely to take an “America-First” policy approach on everything from trade to immigration. The source described it as “a policy priority for 2022 and beyond.”

Filed Under:

The Tree Of Liberty Must Be Refreshed From Time To Time With The Blood Of Patriots & Tyrants

Writing to William Smith , John Adams’ secretary and future son-in-law, Thomas Jefferson seemed to welcome Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts: “god forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion . . . the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.” Jefferson was confident that rather than repression, the “remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them.”

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The Democrats’ Change Of Heart About The Need For A Balanced Budget And Celebrating The 2

Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Speaker, as we draw this 104th Congress to a close, I think it is appropriate to remember where we were 2 years ago, before Republicans became a majority in this House. The Democrats were not talking about a balanced budget. In fact, the President’s balanced budget at that time, 2 years ago, had a $200 billion deficit every year into the foreseeable future.

In 1995, the new Republican majority came in and insisted that Government do what Americans have to do in their personal family budgets–that being–balance the Federal budget. The Democrats, the President, did their focus groups, they took the polls. They decided, Americans do want a balanced budget. They think it is reasonable. Two years ago, nobody on the liberal side of the aisle was talking about a balanced budget, and now everybody is talking about it. That is progress.

The liberals and big Government advocates try to belittle this Republican Congress, and criticize the

Contract With America. We are going to celebrate our 2-year anniversary of the Contract With America today. Let us just remember that most of the brag items of accomplishments that President Clinton mentioned in his acceptance speech were passed by the Republican-controlled 104th Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the Contract With America items signed into law in the last 2 years.

The material referred to is as follows:

The Providential Detection Depicts Jefferson Attempting To Destroy The Constitution

In this cartoon, Thomas Jefferson kneels before the altar of Gallic despotism as God and an American eagle attempt to prevent him from destroying the United States Constitution. He is depicted as about to fling a document labeled “Constitution & Independence U.S.A.” into the fire fed by the flames of radical writings. Jefferson’s alleged attack on George Washington and John Adams in the form of a letter to Philip Mazzei falls from Jefferson’s pocket. Jefferson is supported by Satan, the writings of Thomas Paine, and the French philosophers.

Artist unknown. The Providential Detection, 1797–1800. Copyprint of lithograph. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts

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Document Led To Many Successes But Miscalculation In 1998 Midterms Proved Costly

OPINION — In 1994, Republicans did something really big.

At the height of the midterm elections that year, on Sept. 27, House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich and a Republican Conference driven by conservative change agents, offered the American electorate a policy document called the “Contract With America.”

Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the signing of that contract on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. A few weeks later, Republicans won the House, ending a losing streak that dated back to 1954. That victory remains one of the most important events in American political history, an unexpected election outcome that dramatically changed the direction of the country.

Gingrich was one of those rare political leaders whose vision and strength of personality could change not only the course of a nation but the lives of its people in direct and positive ways. His victory, however, didn’t come easy.

It was a long journey for a man who had spent years in the political wilderness as a backbencher, driving what he saw as an “opportunity agenda,” anchored in policy, that could serve as a means to effect political change. For him, it was all about content and communicating the value of that content.

Here’s what I wrote in a piece for The Ripon Forum on the contract’s 20th anniversary:

The Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement And Modernization Act Of 2003

At several points, participants close to the conference committee negotiations believed that another opportunity for reform would be missed. On November 15, however, the conferees reached agreement on a new version of H.R. 1, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003. The 678-page conference report included many of the features that had come to be widely accepted in earlier proposals, such as the discount card, additional assistance for low-income beneficiaries, a substantial gap in benefits for individuals with high drug costs , and the use of private pharmacy benefit managers in lieu of direct governmental regulation. Yet the bill reflected “concession” more than “compromise,” with the final provisions on some of the most controversial issues watered down so as to become almost meaningless to their proponents. This deepened rather than resolved cleavages that pitted Democrats against Republicans and, at times, Republicans against Republicans .

The final product included the following major provisions :

Here’s another bit of insanity: The bill pays private insurance companies to take elderly patients. You know how one of the tenets of conservative philosophy is that private companies can always deliver a product better and cheaper? So why does the Medicare bill offer billions in subsidies to private insurers to induce them into the market? That’s not competition; that’s corporate welfare.

For Republicans Crisis Is The Message As The Outrage Machine Ramps Up

With next year’s midterm elections seen as a referendum on Democratic rule, Republicans are seeking to create a sense of instability and overreach, diverting focus from their own divisions.

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders would like everyone to know that the nation is in crisis.

There is an economic crisis, they say, with rising prices and overly generous unemployment benefits; a national security crisis; a border security crisis, with its attendant homeland security crisis, humanitarian crisis, and public health crisis; and a separate energy crisis.

Pressed this week on whether the nation was really so beleaguered, the No. 2 Republican in the House, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, thought of still more crises: anti-Semitism in the Democratic ranks, “yet another crisis,” he asserted, and a labor shortage crisis.

“Unfortunately they’re all real,” he said, capping a 25-minute news conference in which the word “crisis” was used once a minute, “and they’re all being caused by President Biden’s actions.”

But for divided House Republicans, outrage may be the tie that binds — at least their leaders hope so.

“Look, our main crisis is we’re not the majority — that’s our top crisis,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma.

House Republicans, still overwhelmingly in the thrall of Donald J. Trump, have learned over the last four years that grievance, loudly expressed, carries political weight, especially with their core voters.

Jefferson Experiences The Political Limits Of Freedom Of The Press

President Jefferson’s support for freedom of the press was sorely tested in 1802 when James Callender publicly charged that Jefferson “keeps and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is Sally.” The Richmond Recorder, first printed Callender’s account of Jefferson’s intimate relationship with his wife’s half sister, Sally Hemings, but controversy has surrounded the accusation and the relationship to the present day. Callender, whose vitriolic attacks on Federalist opponents of Jefferson in the 1790s had been secretly funded by Jefferson and Republican allies, turned against Jefferson when the president failed to give him a patronage position.

The Richmond Recorder, September 1, 1802. Courtesy of the Virginia State Library, Richmond

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A Win For Biden Us Senate Passes $1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill

After years of partisan gridlock, Republicans join Democrats in support of future investment in highways, transit.

The United States Senate approved a major infrastructure spending bill designed to invest $1 trillion in roads, bridges, public transport and improved internet access across the next five years.

After years of partisan gridlock in Washington, DC, Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the legislation, delivering a legislative victory for President Joe Biden who has urged members of the two major parties in Congress to work together.

Hours later, the Senate passed a $3.5 trillion budget resolution – voting 50-49 along party lines – meant to serve as bedrock of the Biden administration’s resphaing federal priorities. The budget framework aims bolster family services, health, and environment programmes.

“The American people will now see the most robust injection of funds into infrastructure in decades,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the passage of the infrastructure bill.

“You’ll find better roads, bridges, airports, broadband in the United Arab Emirates than in the United States of America,” Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, said.

“The bill will make large and significant differences in both productivity and job creation in America for decades to come,” Schumer said.

It would provide tuition-free community college and foster investments in programmes to significantly reduce carbon emissions blamed for climate change.

President Clinton And Hillary Clinton Were Campaign Targets

Teske adds that Republicans had some easy “targets to attack,” from the unpopular, early years of President Bill Clinton, to the Hillary Clinton-led health care proposal to individual corruption cases in Congress.

The overarching goal of the contract involved cutting taxes, reducing the size of government and reducing government regulations, taking aim at Congress, itself, to be more transparent, less corrupt and more open with the public.

“Essentially, it claimed that it would ‘drain the swamp’—though they didn’t use that term, in terms of what Donald Trump would later articulate,” Teske says. “If successful, the contract specified 10 bills they would bring up for votes in the first 100 days, including a balanced budget amendment, term limits, social security reform and others.”

The Contract With America: Implementing New Ideas In The Us

Select a Section 1/0

Decades from now, historians quite likely will reflect back uponthe Contract With America as one of the most significantdevelopments in the political history of the United States. As NewtGingrich, the first Republican Speaker of the House ofRepresentatives in 40 years, has written: “there is no comparablecongressional document in our two-hundred-year history.”

Never before had so detailed a document become such an integralpart of a congressional election campaign; never had so manyinnovative ideas been drafted into legislation so quickly; andnever in the previous six decades had so much legislation beenpassed by the House of Representatives in less than 100 days afterthe newly elected Members of Congress took office. As the chiefpolitical columnist for The New York Times, R. W. Apple,wrote in a front page news analysis: “Perhaps not since the startof the New Deal , to which many of the programs now underattack can trace their origins, has Congress moved with such speedon so many fronts.”

The Contract and the Conservatives

The changes being debated in America now can provide usefullessons and insights to democratic societies throughout the worlddealing with social and economic problems similar to thoseconfronting the United States.

Perhaps the best way to address various aspects of the ContractWith America, the ideas in and behind the Contract and its relationto the size and scope of government activities, is to answer threebasic questions:

The Impasse Before And After The 2000 Presidential Election

In the wake of the bipartisan commission’s deliberations, Senator Breaux and Representative Thomas joined Senator Bill Frist on a series of proposals to include a prescription drug benefit as essentially an inducement for beneficiaries to shift from the traditional fee-for-service program to a private health plan. More liberal and moderate members of Congress introduced proposals for an independent outpatient prescription drug benefit in the Medicare program.

In addition, in his 1999 State of the Union address, President Clinton proposed his own plan for a voluntary outpatient prescription drug benefit available to all Medicare beneficiaries. A new Part D drug benefit premium would be established, providing subsidies for low-income beneficiaries with incomes below 150 percent of poverty. This plan introduced the idea of combining modest benefits for most if not all beneficiaries with “stop-loss” protection for the relatively few enrollees with catastrophic costs. Medicare would cover 50 percent of an enrollee’s first $5,000 in annual drug spending and 100 percent of any additional expenses .

Another reason for the deadlock was that the amount proposed in the president’s budget was only one-tenth of what the Congressional Budget Office projected that the Medicare population would spend on prescription drugs during that period. Heading into the 2002 election, Democrats reasoned that no benefit was better than an inadequate benefit.

Thomas Jefferson’s Annotated Copy Of The Federalist Papers

Thomas Jefferson called the collected essays written by Alexander Hamilton , James Madison, and John Jay , the “best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written.” Jefferson, like many other contemporary Americans, tried to determine which essays had been written by each of the three authors. On this inside cover sheet Jefferson credited Madison with authorship of more than a dozen essays. The question of who wrote each of the essays has never been definitively answered.

The Federalist: A Collection of Essays, Written in Favour of the New Constitution. Vol. 1. New York: J. and A. McLean, 1788. Rare Book and Special Collections Division

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National Bipartisan Commission On The Future Of Medicare

Following the failure of President Clinton’s health care reform proposal in 1994, Republicans captured majorities in both houses of Congress. In 1995 the main policy issue regarding Medicare was not how to improve benefits but how to restructure the program and limit the federal government’s financial liability for existing coverage. The Medicare Preservation Act, which Congress passed as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1995 but President Clinton vetoed, included major reforms and reductions in spending in Medicare and other government programs as well as substantial tax cuts. Republican strategists miscalculated both the president’s willingness to accept the legislation and the public’s reaction . Nonetheless, reducing the budget deficit remained a high political priority, and two years later, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 cut projected Medicare spending by $115 billion over five years and by $385 billion over ten years .

The Balanced Budget Act created a new Medicare+Choice program, which encouraged beneficiaries to choose among the traditional fee-for-service Medicare, HMOs, and preferred-provider organizations. It also created Medicare medical savings accounts, changed payment policies and formulas for providers and health plans, strengthened efforts to prevent and prosecute fraud and abuse by Medicare providers, and created the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare.

Political Attack Ads In The Era Of The Founding Fathers

In this critical cartoon, Thomas Jefferson as the cock or rooster, courts a hen, portrayed as Sally Hemings. Contemporary political opponents of Jefferson sought to destroy his presidency and his new political party with charges of Jefferson’s promiscuous behavior and his ownership of slaves. The cock was also a symbol of revolutionary France, which Jefferson was known to admire and which, his critics believed, Jefferson unduly favored.

James Akin. “A Philosophic Cock,” Newburyport, Massachusetts, c. 1804. Hand-colored aquatint. Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts

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Prescription Drug Policies In The Nixon Administration

Following submission of the task force’s report, Secretary Finch appointed a review committee headed by John Dunlop of Harvard University, the former chair of President Nixon’s health transition team who had been appointed secretary of labor. The committee convened in April and submitted its report on July 23, 1969. With only one dissenting voice from a representative of the pharmaceutical manufacturers, the committee endorsed a number of the task force’s recommendations. In particular, “the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare should recommend an Administration decision for an out-of-hospital drug insurance program under Medicare” .

The proposed regulations were very similar to those recommended by the task force in 1969. Such a policy stemming from a Republican administration came as a surprise, however, and illustrated how concerned policymakers were about rising medical costs. Weinberger’s announcement touched the pharmaceutical industry’s most sensitive nerves, endorsing generic substitutes for brand-name products and limits on reimbursement. Despite vigorous industry opposition, state laws were already changing to allow pharmacists to substitute cheaper, generic drugs for brand-name products. Now the federal government was adopting similar methods.

Transgender Athlete Rene Richards Barred From Us Open

What was not included? Details on how these bills would be executed and what they would cost.

“It probably did not matter that it was vague on costs, and that was even an advantage,” Teske says. “The goals were big picture, and ones that many voters could understand, without getting into—and bogged down by—the details of budget costs, specific programs that might go away, etc.”

Jefferson Urges Supporters To Write Newspaper Attacks

Thomas Jefferson seldom wrote articles or essays for the press, but he did urge his supporters such as James Madison, James Monroe , John Beckley , and David Rittenhouse to publicly counter the Federalists. In this July 7, 1793, letter, Jefferson urges Madison to attack the ideas of Alexander Hamilton: “for god’s sake, my dear Sir, take up your pen, select the most striking heresies, and cut him to peices in the face of the public.” Both Republicans and Federalists engaged in critical attacks on their opponents.

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison July 7, 1793. Manuscript letter. Manuscript Division

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Prescription Drug Coverage In The Health Security Act

The next opportunity to add an outpatient prescription drug benefit in the Medicare program came in 1993 as part of the health security act proposed by President Bill Clinton . Adding a Medicare drug benefit was good policy and good politics: It would be extraordinarily difficult to guarantee comprehensive health benefits, including drugs, to all Americans under age 65 and not to do the same for senior citizens and the disabled, whose needs were generally higher. A new drug benefit might also rally the support of Medicare beneficiaries for the Clinton plan, or at least neutralize potential opposition, given that the plan called for savings in other parts of Medicare as a way to help pay for coverage of uninsured persons under age 65.

The proposed expansion of the Medicare program would include an outpatient prescription drug and biologics benefit as well as a guaranteed national benefits package for those under the age of 65. The Medicare drug benefit would become part of Part B, adding $11 per month to the premium. Beneficiaries would pay a $250 annual deductible and 20 percent of the cost of each prescription up to an annual maximum of $1,000. Low-income beneficiaries would receive assistance with cost sharing.

In the report describing the health security act, the Clinton administration made clear its strategy to contain the cost of the prescription drug benefit:

Federal Prohibition Of Foreign Importation Of Slaves

In his “Sixth Annual Message to Congress” on December 2, 1806, President Jefferson, at the earliest moment allowed by the Constitution, called on Congress to abolish the importation of slaves from outside the United States. The United States Constitution had forbidden Congress to abolish “the Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit” prior to 1808. Congress readily complied with the president’s request and the importation of slaves was prohibited as of January 1, 1808.

Thomas Jefferson. “Sixth Annual Message to Congress,” December 2, 1806. Manuscript. Manuscript Division

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Clinton’s Actions Led Republicans To Devise Contract

Oct 28, 1994

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At the outset of the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton stressed the importance of a middle class tax cut. After waffling for months on whether he would deliver on this “central’ promise, Clinton signaled retreat at a Jan. 14, 1992, press conference: “I never did meet any voter who thought that it was important.’

And now, with his approval rating at record lows, a failed legislative agenda and facing the end of his Democrat-controlled Congress, Clinton is reverting back to campaign mode and promising the middle-class a tax cut. Clearly, he hopes the American middle class has a short memory:Maybe they’ll forget the last time Clinton promised a middle-class tax cut, Clinton and his Congress raised their taxes on gas, on middle-income seniors’ Social Security benefits and on more than a million small businesses.

Maybe they’ll forget Clinton and his Congress failed to “end welfare’ as we know it.

Maybe they’ll forget the Clinton and his Congress’ attempt to ram a government-run health care scheme down our throats.

Maybe they’ll forget nearly $7 billion in pork barrel and social welfare spending as a “surtax’ for a watered-down crime bill that saw its toughest provisions stripped by Democrats.

Maybe they’ll forget they were promised “change’ and received instead more taxes, more spending and more government.

American Federalism 1776 To 1997:significant Events

Analyst in American National GovernmentGovernment DivisionUpdated January 6, 1997

SUMMARY

Since ratification of the Constitution, which established a union ofstates under a federal system of governance, two questions have generatedconsiderable debate: What is the nature of the union? What powers, privileges,duties, and responsibilities does the Constitution grant to the nationalgovernment and reserve to the states and the people? During the 208-yearhistory of the Constitution, these issues have been debated time and againand have shaped and been shaped by the nation’s political, social, andeconomic history.

During the pre-federalism period, the country waged a war for independenceand established a confederation form of government that created a leagueof sovereign states. Deficiencies in the Articles of Confederation promptedits repeal and the ratification of a new Constitution creating a federalsystem of government comprised of a national government and states. Almostimmediately upon its adoption, issues concerning state sovereignty andthe supremacy of federal authority were hotly debated and ultimately ledto the Civil War.

CONTENTS

ADDITIONAL READING

INTRODUCTION

Third, neither level of government canabolish the other. The Civil War was fought not only on the question ofslavery but also central to the conflict were questions of states’ sovereigntyincluding the power to nullify federal laws or dissolve the Union.

PRE-FEDERALISM PERIOD: 1775 TO 1789 ADDITIONAL READING

Jefferson’s Plans To Improve The Urban Environment

Nicholas King’s sketch of Thomas Jefferson’s plans for Lombardy poplars to line Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the President’s House in Washington, D.C., was sent in 1803 to Jefferson by Thomas Munrow , superintendent of the city of Washington. Jefferson’s landscaping ideas were influenced by the elegant avenues and gardens in Paris and contemporary concepts that trees and plants would purify the air in cities.

Nicholas King. March 12, 1803. Manuscript sketch. Manuscript Division

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Contrasting Procedures Of The Senate And The House

The order of business in the Senate is simpler than that of the House. While the procedure of both bodies is basically founded on Jefferson’s Manual of Parliamentary Practice, the practices of the two bodies are at considerable variance. The order and privileged status of motions and the amending procedure of the two are at less variance than their method of calling up business. The business of the Senate is not divided into classes as a basis for their consideration, nor are there calendar days set aside each month in the Senate for the consideration of particular bills and resolutions. The nature of bills has no effect on the order or time of their initial consideration.

The Senate, like the House, gives certain motions a privileged status over others and certain business, such as conference reports, command first or immediate consideration, under the theory that a bill which has reached the conference stage has been moved a long way toward enactment and should be privileged when compared with bills that have only been reported.

The continuity of sessions of the same Congress is provided for by the Senate rules:

At the second or any subsequent session of a Congress, the legislative business of the Senate which remained undetermined at the close of the next preceding session of that Congress shall be resumed and proceeded with in the same manner as if no adjournment of the Senate had taken place.

The Midterms Introduced Extreme Divisive Politics

As for the contract’s lasting impact? Most of its ideas and proposals did not pass Congress, or were vetoed by Clinton, and, according to Teske, the ones that did pass were not radical departures and instead relatively minor in scope. But it did put Republicans back in power in Congress, which they’ve largely held onto in the years since.

“The Gingrich approach of extreme right ideas, combined with a scorched-earth personal level of politics in attacking opponents—later seen in Clinton’s investigations and impeachment—has also had a major impact on American politics” he says. “It helped bring a much more ‘win at all costs’ mentality, and a divisiveness that persists today.”

Our Liberty Depends Upon The Freedom Of The Press

Eighteenth-century political philosophers concerned themselves with the balance between the restrictions needed to make a government function and the individual liberties guaranteed by that government. Jefferson’s efforts to protect individual rights including freedom of the press were persistent, pivotal, and not always successful. Jefferson was a staunch advocate of freedom of the press, asserting in a January 28, 1786, letter to James Currie , a Virginia physician and frequent correspondent during Jefferson’s residence in France: “our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

Thomas Jefferson to James Currie, January 28, 1786. Manuscript letter. Manuscript Division

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Jefferson Advocates Limited Power Of Constitution

Thomas Jefferson’s February 15, 1791, opinion on the constitutionality of a national bank is considered one of the stellar statements on the limited powers and strict construction of the Federal Constitution. Alexander Hamilton, a proponent of the broadest interpretation of the constitution based on the implied powers of the Federal Constitution, was the leading advocate for the national bank. Jefferson and Hamilton quickly became outspoken leaders of two opposing interpretations of national government.

Thomas Jefferson. Opinion on a National Bank 1791. Manuscript. Manuscript Division

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yorkhornby · 3 years

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If you are experiencing a specific issue related to drug trafficking or drug use please contact our office.

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lonnysapotheek · 3 years

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Canada’s Order Against U.S. Drug Imports to Prevent Shortages Directed at Wholesale Not Patient Purchases

Canada issued an interim order on Friday, November 27, preventing drug establishments from exporting products that would risk causing domestic shortages. The press release with quotes from Health Minister Patty Hajdu may be more digestible than the official order.

As I see it, Americans who rely on buying less expensive prescription drugs from Canada should not be too concerned about this new development. The order is directed at companies who distribute drugs via wholesale channels, not pharmacies that dispense drugs directly to patients. Patients in the U.S. with a valid prescription who safely order drugs from pharmacies in Canada do so through licensed retail pharmacies not wholesalers.

The order was issued prior to the final rule in the U.S. allowing wholesale importation of lower cost drugs from Canada under what’s known as Section 804, which became effective November 30. States and other non-federal entities will need approval from the Secretary of Health and Human Services in order for any wholesale drug importation to commence under the new rule. Over the last year or so, Canada has expressed concerns about the Trump administration’s policies, fearing that larger scale wholesale drug importation from the U.S. could cause shortages. Canadian officials site the fact that the U.S. population is far larger. The U.S. has 329 million compared to Canada’s 38 million people. In any case, nothing has changed as of yet because Section 804 imports have not begun.

Drug shortages are a problem in many countries, Canada and the U.S. included. For information about drug shortages in the U.S. see: https://www.fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/drug-shortages; in Canada, see: https://www.drugshortagescanada.ca/.

The order states that a drug establishment may only distribute drugs for consumption outside of Canada if it “has reasonable grounds to believe that the distribution will not cause or exacerbate a shortage of the drug.” It also mandates new reporting requirements for those establishments that export drugs.

Canada has the right and obligation to protect its citizens from drug shortages. Its actions are understandable, if not commendable. However, Canada’s efforts do not mean that new initiatives on drug importation to lower prices in the U.S. will fail. It means that when wholesale importation commences through the new Section 804 channels, they must not cause shortages in Canada. It’s unknown at this time which specific products might be affected and the new order by Canada doesn’t mention any.

Licensed pharmacies in Canada that dispense prescription drugs to patients in the U.S. play an important role in helping Americans access treatments that are otherwise unaffordable. For the individual patients, that access is incredibly helpful, if not lifesaving. In the grand scheme of things, the personal drug importation market is too small to cause shortages in Canada. Furthermore, many “Canadian” online pharmacies partner with licensed pharmacies in other countries to fill prescription orders for Americans.

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opedguy · 4 years

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Stock Market Rolls Upward

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), May 7, 2020.--Getting ahead of itself, Wall Street continues its long slog up the mountain, adding 211 points today to the Down Jones Industrial Average but off 150 points from its morning high. Wall Street shrugged off more bad news on the unemployment front, with another 3.189 million filing for initial unemployment claims, bringing the total since March 20 to 33 million. Shattering more unemployment records, the nation’s unemployment rate stood at 20%, up from 3.5 % before the coronavirus AKA SARS CoV-2 or Covid-19 decimated the U.S. economy, or, more accurately, elected officials decimated the economy. Yesterday’s “shocking” report read by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that 66% of New York hospital admissions came from residents who were “sheltering in place” prior to getting sick. Cuomo’s report suggests that infectious disease experts took the wrong tack.

Trump’s Coronavirus Task Force led by 80-year-old Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx urged Trump in the strongest possible way to shut down the U.S. economy, essentially ordering U.S. citizens to “shelter in place.” With businesses, large and small, no longer to operate, the economy has gone down hill ever since. But now that it’s known that two-thirds of New York residents hospitalized for coronavirus got it sheltering in place, elected officials must question the advisability of continuing to keep the economy locked down. Trump has given governors the right to decide what’s best for individual states, with some states like California following the old prescription for slowing the virus of sheltering in place. When you add up the disastrous effect on the U.S. economy, it looks like shelter in place has caused more disease, death and destruction to U.S. citizens.

Dr. Fauci and Birx don’t look at the big picture, only the narrow-minded guidelines for dealing with a global pandemic. Infectious disease experts don’t consider the unemployment, poverty, disease and death caused from plunging the U.S. economy into a protracted recession or possible depression. When you ask Fauci or Birix of dealing with unemployment, poverty, disease, death, suicides, anarchy all connected with unemployment they have no answers, largely because it’s not their bailiwick. Trump’s instincts to open up the economy couldn’t be more urgent, with CARES Act cash bound to run out soon. California Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to cite medical experts to justify keeping the state shuttered far longer than necessary. Today’s press has repeated the argument that if you don’t keep “shelter in place” orders, more people are going to get sick and die.

Yet Cuomo’s recent findings should alert infectious disease experts that the benefits of sheltering in place, at least at this stage to the coronvirus epidemic, no longer outweigh the damage to citizens’ lives from prolonged unemployment. When you look at anarchy in any society, it usually comes from prolonged unemployment, where the ruling authority cannot product enough jobs to keep citizens working. “Idle hands are the“devils work” refers to what happens when there are no jobs to keep people occupied. Wall Street can look to the future, whether recent or distant, to forecast better economic times. But if you look at the dramatic loss of corporate earning, in a wide swath of the economy, it’s unrealistic that Wall Street can sustain its current buying mood. Unemployment and the economic fallout continue to rise, with the Labor Department expected to report more bad news tomorrow.

Without the CARES Act bailout for hotels, airlines and cruise ships, bankruptcies would be skyrocketing, far worse than the 2008 Financial Crisis, where bottom fell out from the mortgage-backed securities industry. Real estate new and existing home sales have tumbled, despite record low interest rates. Like other industries wracked with unemployment, the real estate market is no different. When ordinary citizens have no expendable cash, they’re not looking to buy real estate. Ford and Genera Motors have also taken billions in write-downs as sales and forward earnings look bleak into the indefinite future. Shutting down the economy to save an unknown number of lives with the coronavirus epidemic has caused a raft of other problems, including driving ordinary workers into unemployment, poverty, homelessness and more disease, suicide, violence, alcoholism and drug addiction.

When 67-year-old Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell slashed interest rates to zero March 15, he recognized that a serious recession was imminent. Powell tried to get ahead to today’s record unemployment, now exceeding 20% nationwide but likely to get much worse in the weeks-and-months ahead. Wall Street can rally all it wants but eventually decimated earnings will cause today’s averages to fall dramatically, much like it did March 23 when the Dow closed at 18,213.63 over 40% below its Feb. 12 record high of 29,551. Closing today at 23,875.89 is a spectacular comeback from its March 23 low, only 20% off. But it’s unlikely the Dow, Nasdaq or S&P 500 can sustain current levels when corporate earnings, bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures continue to rise. It’s hard to stay in a buying mood when unemployment could hit 30%, Great Depression levels.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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izayoi1242 · 4 years

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DealBook: A Prescription for Reviving the Economy

By Unknown Author The markets are abuzz about early data from a trial of an antiviral drug, as President Trump unveils guidelines for restarting the U.S. economy. Published: April 17, 2020 at 08:02PM from NYT Business https://ift.tt/3bgrHxT via IFTTT

#IFTTT #NYT #NEWS

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hottmessexpresss · 4 years

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**Trigger Warning** Those who are sensitive to topics such as: drug-use, over-dose, and language/descriptions/scenarios involving drugs and drug activity, please do not continue reading, or read at your own risk**

I remember I was in the parking lot of a 24 hour fitness in Bakersfield, Ca. I remember distinctly feeling like I was wrapped in a warm, weighted blanket. My breathing was shallow, but it felt "nice". I felt as if some large fluffy llama was sitting directly on my chest. Oddly enough, I felt at peace...and I felt very, very, sleepy. I didn't feel scared. I felt "whole" for the first time- I felt...happy.

Unknown time had lapsed and I woke up with vomit all over my shirt. I was dazed and confused, and blisfully unaware of my surroundings. I came to, and the passenger next to me was crying and repeatedly saying, "I don't want to go to jail. I don't want to go to jail."

That was my first and only opiate induced over-dose, and before Narcan has been heavily encouraged and issued. If you think that was enough to scare me, you're dead wrong.

Fast forward 6 years, give or take...and here I am sitting in the hospital watching my husband writhe in pain. He just had a total shoulder replacement surgery for a second time, at 42 years old (that is considered "young" for this type of evasive surgery.) My husband never shows he is pain, and has been dealing with this pain for over a year. Doctors never took him seriously. He didn't "look" to be in pain, and his physiological responses didn't "show" he was in pain. Often, there was frustration. Anger. Resentment. Not a soul believed him, and he had accepted he was going to have to deal with it for the remainder of his life. My husband served 21 years in the United States Military. His body is proof of what men and women can endure ensuring our freedoms are protected.

My husband has said, "If it weren't for these junkies, I wouldn't have to be jumping through hoops to be taken seriously." It didn't offend me. It didn't hurt my feelings. With the recent (but not new) opiate epidemic, my mind has been reeling with questions, thoughts, and residual pain. How* do we as a society, fix this problem? What can be done to HELP? What types of out-patient, low cost programs could make an impact in communities of these (addicts) people?

Drugs do not discriminate. When I was detained by the oh-so-lovely, Bakersfield Police Department back in 2014, I was treated as less than a person. "How long have you been doing drugs??? You're too pretty and young to be a tweaker." I was humiliated. I sat in silence, and in that moment "they" had won. I wanted to tell them....."If you only knew me.....if you only knew my story....my amazing, loving, parents...my upbringing, my home...my college education....." but to them, I was just 'another tweaker,' and another case number to report on. The stigma is there. I've seen comments on numerous facebook posts, "tweakers deserve to die." But my friends, they do not. If it weren't for the passanger in my car 6 years ago (even if it were for selfish reasons...AKA not going to jail) I would not have had my beautiful babies, and I would not have had a fighting chance to change my life in a productive and meaningful way.

Not even a full 24 hours after surgery, my husband's nerve block started to wear off. We paged his nurse for relief......and what happened? The on-call resident had a nurse bring my husband Tylenol. Tylenol. After a major surgery. I was offended, and in that moment, I felt embarrassed. There are people out here in this world in legitimate pain. Because of the sudden intensity of the current opiate epidemic, they (pain patients) were forced to taper off of their medication completely, or cut back harshly on their medication. Is this the right thing to do? Is this fair to those battling pain daily with the medical records to back it all up? This is where most addictions can start. "It's a prescription by my doctor... so it's fine." I can bet most do not abuse them, because of course, they need them. But there also people out in this world with emotional pain.

The first time I tried Oxycontin, I felt the effects relatively quickly. Battling depression since 12 years of age, I was dealing with my parents divorce and remarriages, new family dynamics, being a fat, and bullied nerd....I never took medication long enough to know if it would be helpful to me. So in that moment, naiive to what was to come, not knowing my genetic predisposition, I thought to myself, "so THIS is happiness....THIS is what "normal" feels like." And so began my endless and bottomless search for that euphoric happiness, and my self-medication began.

My husband was finally given an Oxycodone 11 HOURS later. It was horrible seeing his face knowing he was in unbearable pain. "We're giving you two doses of Oxycodone, Mr. Steele." My ears. I heard the name, and I knew it all too well. A former best-friend of mine; one whom I loved more than myself and loved more than anything else in this entire world at one point. The word itself, triggered me. Almost 6 years of being free and clear off that shit, and the word alone sent my neurotransmitters firing rapidly and excitedly. My brain started to illict a chemical and emotional response... to a fuckin' word*. I started to feel anxious. Uneasy. Worried. Angry. Jealous. To those who have never been addicted to drugs, this probably sounds absolutely CRAZY to you. How can someone be jealous of someone in legitimate pain and taking pain pills? Well, someone who had once before been EXCITED to fracture her thumb knowing she was getting pain pills (me). I knew* my husband needed them. I knew he had a legitimate reason to need them-but I felt* out of my mind. That* is addiction... That* is your brain fighting against the rational fibers of what is "normal". After addiction sets in, your brain under goes chemical changes. Your "Hedonic Set-Point" of happiness is altered and flipped the fuck upside down. You become addicted because you realize that the intense euphoria and happiness, that warm, fuzzy feeling in your stomach, the rush to your head...have all caused a peak beyond your "set point" of euphoria. You crave it, and you NEED it just to even function and feel "normal" If you don't use (drugs), your entire body shuts down and you become so sick (the flu times 500). So you continue to use and abuse anything to reach the level of "normal" (and beyond) in order to not feel like a depressed piece of shit. Rock bottom hits (whenever and however that is and may be, and some will never experience the same rock bottom) and you get clean, and your "hedonic set point" is reset and now, unrealistic. You soon realize you will never* feel that level of happiness again (sober). Social context, and psychological predispositions can trigger a response in your brain to want to achieve that chemical, unrealistic level- over and over again.

Recovering addicts face this day in and day out, and in this case, recovery** is a CHOICE. No one wakes up one day and says, "you know what? I'm going to steal from my family and act like a reckless fool and ruin my normalcy and fuck up my entire family (and my fuckin' credit score) Addicts can do bad things, but that doesn't make them bad people. They are the walking wounded. In the words of my favorite author, Charles Bukowski, "we don't even ask (for) happiness, just a little less pain." A close friend of mines addiction was so deep, she lost custody of her child and lost sight of everything she once loved. No one in their right mind* would EVER jeopardize the relationship and well being with their own flesh and blood. People who weren't addicted could never phatom this scenario, but addiction is* ugly. She passed away almost two years ago, leaving her daughter and family behind. Again, addiction can be so powerful and it trumps all things good. Addicts become selfish. Because they only care about themselves and their next fix. Unless they get the proper intervention, have kick ass insurance, and the will and reason deep down to stop, they won't. That's why in NA, they say some people's only way out of addiction, is jail, institutions, or death.

I feel embarrassed sometimes to admit any of this. Those who knew me in my active addiction phase, constantly said, "where* is Katelyn? Where* did she go? This is not* the Katelyn we know and loved..." Addicts have to first admit they are powerless over their addiction. Along with this, comes a mountain of shame, guilt, embarrassment, shame, and a total slap in the face of everything* they were covering up during their abuse. We have to essentially re-learn how to live life again. How to cope with underlying mental illness, how to cope with triggers, how to live day to day without their former best friend.

I wish deep down I wasn't this way. I wish deep down the muffled voice subtly nagging at my brain would stop. I wish i knew better. I don't feel this hardcore temptation anymore. In the beginning, everything felt "unfair" and life kept throwing punches at me and I struggled to handle them. I blamed others for my addiction and carried around SO much anger. One day, it clicked. No one forced me to do anything. Only I was to blame. I was responsible and accountable for what happened to me, and only I was responsible for changing my behavior. It was hard. Most of the time, it felt virtually impossible to stop. If any addict could take a magic pill to end the cycle and to start their lives over, I'm betting some- if not most, would. This blog isn't a debate on whether or not addiction is a choice. I could sit here and debate with anyone all day on this subject. This entry is merely pointing out a basic and yet complex struggle one can face years and years down the line during their recovery. I look back and feel accomplished. I overcame something not everyone has the privilege to escape from. Being clean, I was able to rediscover myself, reevaluate goals, mend relationships, and lead a meaningful life. I found my soul-mate and have two amazing babies. My hope for anyone struggling with addiction is to overcome. Take advantage of any and all local resources and dig deep down to find the desire to want to stop. It might take you more than one attempt to get clean. In NA, they mention over and over to never feel like relapse isn't possible and that it "won't happen" to you. Because it is possible. It can happen at any given moment, and there is always a chance of giving in to the demons you have worked so hard to manage and control. Make the concious choice to NOT give in to the monster, no matter how tempting it could be. You are loved. You are worthy.

"Just for today, my thoughts will be on my recovery, living and enjoying life without the use of drugs. Just for today, I will have faith in someone in NA who believes in me and wants to help me in my recovery. Just for today, I will have a program. I will try to follow it to the best of my ability. Just for today, I will be unafraid. My thoughts will be on my new association's- people who are not using and have found a new way of life. So as long as I follow that way, I will have nothing to fear." (Narcotics Anonymous, text)

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

1-800-662-4357

NA (Narcotics Anonymous)- find NA meetings and local resources for recovery.

http://m.na.org/

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googlenewson · 4 years

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Companies today are making significant changes to maintain business operations while protecting their workforce, customers, and the community from the spread of the coronavirus. Although markets are volatile, and there are many unknowns, I have deep confidence in the long-term resilience of our country and economy.

Why do I feel this way? Because I’m fortunate to lead a company where we’ve seen it before.

In our 160 years, Northwestern Mutual has overcome recessions, the Great Depression, natural disasters, wars, and even a pandemic flu—and each time, society, the economy, and markets bounce back. In more than three decades at Northwestern Mutual, I’ve seen five major market downturns—and the resilience that follows.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to overcome these challenges, which place significant pressures on businesses and people’s day-to-day lives, but there are lessons to be learned from a longer-term view. When I was named CEO in 2010, the country was still in the early stages of emerging from the 2008 financial crisis. I’m leaning on three major lessons from that period as we navigate the COVID-19 crisis.

First, financial strength—which means money in reserve, cash on hand, and a strong capital position—takes foresight and preparation, and is necessary to weather economic storms. Prior to 2008, I saw many other companies focus on how quickly they could grow, rather than the importance of a solid balance sheet. We at Northwestern Mutual knew that the challenges coming out of the market meltdown in 2008–09 could be managed, mainly because we took long-term financial strength very seriously throughout that time.

Early on as CEO, I traveled to Japan and formed relationships with leaders in the life insurance industry there. They had experienced decades of low interest rates and shed light on the consequences that had on their companies. I learned from them the importance of wisely managing expenses and maintaining financial strength in a low-interest-rate environment. Even during recent years of record-high stock markets, we have followed this advice.

While we could not predict the coronavirus and its rapid spread across the globe late last year, we knew we were deep into a bull market and needed to be prepared for any potential correction. As a result, we built up our capital reserve to ensure our financial stability. We also regularly stress-test how various catastrophic events could affect our business—including crises in a low-interest-rate environment—which has given us the confidence to face the current situation from a position of strength.

Second, businesses should plan for the long term, but maintain flexibility. In a society of immediate gratification, many businesses are tempted to make decisions based on short-term opportunities for gains. But lasting success takes discipline over time—in good times and through challenges.

It is not always easy and requires patience and practice, but those that plan for the long term are not only able to withstand challenges and market turbulence, they can also seek out opportunities in this period. (Northwestern Mutual offers financial planning services to businesses, and therefore could profit from this advice.) For organizations and individuals that have the means, now is an excellent time to seize long-term investing opportunities in the markets. Long-term investors should take advantage of buying opportunities in a down market, knowing that the economy and markets will bounce back.

Third, leaders need to communicate with authenticity and empathy. Employees and consumers will remember how companies acted and communicated in a crisis long after it’s over. The safety and well-being of employees, clients, and the community comes first, and leaders need to look at how they can provide resources and support during difficult times.

Transparent communication in a crisis is essential, and employers have a critical responsibility to relay pertinent information to their employees quickly and thoroughly. A recent Edelman survey found that employers were people’s most trusted source of information on the coronavirus, trumping government and health company websites and traditional and social media. Nearly two-thirds of respondents wanted updates from their employer at least once a day.

At my company, we have made a commitment to talking with our workforce often—even if the updates are small—so that we keep the conversation going. Our regular communications range from providing the latest guidance from the CDC, to reassurance that we’re prepared for this, to tips on working remotely and the technology that’s available. We’re ensuring that our employees feel supported and know where to go if they have questions or concerns.

At this difficult moment, America needs to remember that we have overcome significant setbacks many times in the past. We’ll get through this one too. If business leaders focus on what’s under our control and lead with confidence, we’ll come away from this even stronger than before.

John Schlifske is chairman, president, and CEO of Northwestern Mutual and a member of the company’s board of trustees.

More opinion in Fortune:

—To fight tomorrow’s pandemic, we need to think like the military today —Prescription drug costs are spiraling, but price controls are the wrong solution —The Fed may have fundamentally altered the nature of risk in the stock market —Why the U.S. needs a new corporate bailout structure—one that doesn’t rely on loans —Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs —WATCH: The CEO of Canada’s biggest bank on the keys to leading through the coronavirus pandemic Listen to our audio briefing, Fortune 500 Daily

from Fortune https://ift.tt/3aqU7Eq

#World News

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asfeedin · 4 years

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Northwestern Mutual CEO: 3 lessons I’ve learned from managing economic crises before the coronavirus

Why do I feel this way? Because I’m fortunate to lead a company where we’ve seen it before.

John Schlifske is chairman, president, and CEO of Northwestern Mutual and a member of the company’s board of trustees.

More opinion in Fortune:

Listen to our audio briefing, Fortune 500 Daily

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shafiasadiq · 4 years

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DealBook: A Prescription for Reviving the Economy by Unknown Author

By Unknown Author

The markets are abuzz about early data from a trial of an antiviral drug, as President Trump unveils guidelines for restarting the U.S. economy.

Published: April 17, 2020 at 04:02AM

from NYT Business Day https://ift.tt/3bgrHxT

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#Cryptocurrency

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ebolanyt · 4 years

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DealBook: A Prescription for Reviving the Economy

By Unknown Author The markets are abuzz about early data from a trial of an antiviral drug, as President Trump unveils guidelines for restarting the U.S. economy. Published: April 17, 2020 at 07:02AM from NYT Business Day https://ift.tt/3bgrHxT via IFTTT

#NYT #Ebola #Media #Health #Propaganda

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stephenmccull · 4 years

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Scalpels Out: Democrats Make Slashing Attacks On Health Care Plans

Top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination torched one another’s proposals to reform the health care system Wednesday, as the contest to unify behind a single candidate to defeat President Donald Trump took a bitterly divisive turn.

Minutes after Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, warmed up the debate audience in Las Vegas by describing the party as a spirited but unified family, most of the candidates abruptly shifted into attack mode — and not just against Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and former New York City mayor making his first, belated appearance in the ninth debate.

Fighting to regain momentum after weak performances in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts dispatched with her opponents’ plans in brutally rapid succession.

Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Ind., mayor, has offered “not a plan” but “a PowerPoint” that she claimed would leave millions uninsured, she said. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has a proposal that is “like a Post-It note: Insert plan here,” she quipped. And Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose “Medicare for All” plan she initially adopted as her own, “has a good start,” but his campaign cannot stop attacking those who question how it would work, she said.

“Health care is a crisis in this country,” Warren concluded. “My approach to this is, we need as much help for as many people as quickly as possible.”

It wasn’t the only tense moment.

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Sanders Angers The Culinary Workers Union

How Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal would affect unions in particular isn’t a new question. But despite strong support for the proposal from some national unions, it emerged as a flashpoint in the run-up to Nevada’s caucus on Saturday, turning the state’s prominent Culinary Workers Union against Sanders, the current frontrunner, in the 11th hour.

The union did not endorse a candidate but warned members that Sanders’ proposal could eliminate the health care coverage they have gained through years of collective bargaining, replacing it with a system that is untested and unknown. The union then put out a statement last week saying its members had been “viciously attacked” by Sanders’ supporters over the organization’s opposition. Sanders responded by saying that, though there were some bad actors on social media, it was “not thinkable” that his supporters would attack union workers.

“Let me be very clear for my good friends in the Culinary Workers union, a great union: I will never sign a bill that will reduce the health care benefits they have,” Sanders said. “We will only expand it for them, for every union in America and for the working class.”

Klobuchar defended the “hard-working” culinary workers “who have health care plans that have been negotiated over time, sweat, and blood,” she said. “And that is the truth for so many Americans right now.”

Last summer Sanders tweaked his proposal to try to alleviate concerns from unions. Under a Medicare for All system, he said, the National Labor Relations Board would supervise unions in renegotiating contracts with employers, so that they could acquire “wrap-around services and other coverage not duplicative of the benefits established under Medicare-for-all.”

The idea, Sanders’ aides said then, was so that any savings a switch to single-payer achieved could still be passed on to workers, as increased benefits or wages.

But members of the Culinary Workers Union — and some other groups — still worry about losing the coverage they have, in exchange for something unknown.

Would that happen? Technically, yes, the health plan Nevada’s culinary workers get through their union would no longer exist. Under Medicare for All, private health plans could not sell coverage that duplicates what the government program offers.

But it’s worth noting that, in this world, culinary workers would still have generous health insurance. Sanders’ envisioned health plan is robust – he says it would cover virtually all practicing physicians and medically necessary services, with virtually no cost-sharing.

Of course, that would also depend on whether a President Sanders could muster support for his plan among skeptical members of Congress.

$100 Billion In Profits

Sanders brought up one favorite talking point twice Wednesday — his claim that the health care industry makes $100 billion a year in profits. We previously checked this claim and rated it True. The number comes from adding the net revenues in 2018 from 10 pharmaceutical companies and 10 health insurance companies. We recalculated the numbers, and they added up. Experts said it was even likely that the figure was an underestimate.

Big Pharma Is Giving Money To Buttigieg And Others

In another biting moment, Sanders charged that drug companies are donating to Buttigieg and other campaigns as the pharmaceutical industry profits off the current system.

We previously checked Sanders’ claim that Buttigieg was a “favorite of the health care industry” and rated it Half True. This is in part because it is actually Sanders who has received the most donations of any Democratic candidate from the entire health care sector, which includes pharmaceutical companies, health insurance industry, hospitals/nursing homes and health professionals.

But, while checking this claim we also found that Buttigieg has received donations from employees and executives of pharmaceutical and health insurance companies such as AbbVie, Aetna, Anthem, Eli Lilly and Co., Merck & Co. and Pfizer. We did not check into donations for other candidates from pharmaceutical executives.

Do People ‘Love’ Their Insurance?

“You don’t start out by saying, I have 160 million people, I’m going to take away the insurance plan that they love,” Bloomberg said just minutes into the debate, pointing out the shortcomings of Sanders’ Medicare for All plan.

It is true that Sanders’ signature health proposal would eliminate private health insurance, replacing it with a single public plan that covers everybody. That would include the roughly 160 million Americans who get employer-sponsored insurance

But Bloomberg’s argument here — that those people “love” their plans — is complicated.

When we previously checked a similar claim — that 160 million people “like their health insurance” — we rated it Half-True. Cursory polling suggests people with that coverage are mostly satisfied.

But most isn’t all. And, experts pointed out to us then, once Americans try to use that coverage, many find it lacking. In a Kaiser Family Foundation/ L.A. Times poll, for instance, 40% of people with employer-sponsored insurance still reported having trouble paying for medical bills, premiums or out-of-pocket costs. In that same poll, about half said they skipped or delayed health care because — even with coverage — they couldn’t afford it. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.)

More About Warren’s Comments On Klobuchar’s Health Plan

“Amy, I looked online at your (health care) plan. It’s two paragraphs,” Warren said.

This is highly misleading.

Warren’s campaign told PolitiFact that she was referring specifically to Klobuchar’s plan for “universal health care.” It pointed to the two paragraphs at the end of this Klobuchar campaign web page, which come under the heading “Propose legislation to get us to universal health care.”

But that ignores most of Klobuchar’s health care plan, which she outlines in quite a bit of detail on four different web pages — a main health care policy page, a more detailed sub-page, a sub-page on prescription drugs and a sub-page on mental health.

We did a word count on the text from those four web pages, and it exceeded 6,000 words — and a lot more than two paragraphs.

PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson contributed.

Scalpels Out: Democrats Make Slashing Attacks On Health Care Plans published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

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gordonwilliamsweb · 4 years

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Scalpels Out: Democrats Make Slashing Attacks On Health Care Plans

“Health care is a crisis in this country,” Warren concluded. “My approach to this is, we need as much help for as many people as quickly as possible.”

It wasn’t the only tense moment.

Email Sign-Up

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Please confirm your email address below:

Sanders Angers The Culinary Workers Union

The idea, Sanders’ aides said then, was so that any savings a switch to single-payer achieved could still be passed on to workers, as increased benefits or wages.

But members of the Culinary Workers Union — and some other groups — still worry about losing the coverage they have, in exchange for something unknown.

Of course, that would also depend on whether a President Sanders could muster support for his plan among skeptical members of Congress.

$100 Billion In Profits

Big Pharma Is Giving Money To Buttigieg And Others

In another biting moment, Sanders charged that drug companies are donating to Buttigieg and other campaigns as the pharmaceutical industry profits off the current system.

Do People ‘Love’ Their Insurance?

But Bloomberg’s argument here — that those people “love” their plans — is complicated.

More About Warren’s Comments On Klobuchar’s Health Plan

“Amy, I looked online at your (health care) plan. It’s two paragraphs,” Warren said.

This is highly misleading.

We did a word count on the text from those four web pages, and it exceeded 6,000 words — and a lot more than two paragraphs.

PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson contributed.

Scalpels Out: Democrats Make Slashing Attacks On Health Care Plans published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

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