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The Third Estate
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How Much Influence Do Drug Companies Have?

Tuesday, May 08, 2007
This much. Some absurd percentage of Americans think we should be able to import pharmaceutical drugs into the U.S. - I think it's like 80% - and we can't gather more than 40 votes for it in the Senate? The safety concerns are pretty absurd, since we are supposed to scan imports anyway. The underlying bill was about improving the FDA, after all. And I'm not impressed with the argument that we can't include the drug import provision because the President was promising a veto. Shouldn't we force the President to veto popular bills, and then force Republican Senators to vote to sustain the veto? Hello! Political strategy 101, people!

No, what this is really about is that Senators are surrounded 24 hours a day by drug company lobbyists, and gave $20 million in campaign contributions last year.

And folks think we're going to get National Health Care without campaign finance reform. Feh.
Posted by Arbitrista @ 6:19 AM
3 Comments:

  • Sounds like campaign finance reform is needed. And since they will never implement anything meaningful themselves, we the people will need to take action ourselves. Here's my contribution...

    www.ExpertVoter.org

    The idea is to provide candidates with a platform for getting their message out that doesn't cost millions of dollars (via traditional media). This way, at least they're off to a good start in not owing anyone.

    Your bigger point is absolutely true...it's pointless to fight the drug law without first breakign the special interest connection.

    gary

    By Blogger gary, at 7:54 PM  

  • That's a nice website, but I'm still not giving up on public financing quite yet. I think Durbin's bill is a good one.

    By Blogger Arbitrista, at 8:11 AM  

  • Oh, absolutely. I would't give up on campaign finance reform either. It's even one of the issues on the website. I'm just saying that free communication for the candidates helps the cause of democracy.

    gary
    www.ExpertVoter.org

    By Blogger gary, at 3:29 PM  
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