Tag Archives: abbott

Texas Is About to Crack Down on Undocumented Immigrants

by CedricSolander Posted on April 27, 2017

Mother Jones

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Texas is about to become the second state to outlaw sanctuary cities, jurisdictions that refuse to fully comply with federal enforcement of immigration laws. On Thursday, lawmakers in the Texas House of Representatives gave approval to legislation that would make it a misdemeanor crime for local law enforcement to not cooperate with federal immigration authorities, with penalties of up to $25,500 in fines for local governments and jail time for individual law enforcement officials who maintain sanctuary cities. The legislation would also allow local police officers to inquire about someone’s immigration status during routine encounters such as traffic stops. A slightly different version of the bill already passed in the state senate, and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has made passing legislation banning sanctuary cities a top priority this legislative session, will likely sign the final measure.

Texas became one of the battlegrounds in the national debate over sanctuary cities when Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez, after taking office earlier this year, instituted a new policy for her department to not fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Gov. Abbott cut off funding in retaliation and even threatened to oust the sheriff. In a parallel effort, the Trump administration is also trying to cut off federal funding to jurisdictions that refuse to fully cooperate with federal immigration officials.

Thursday’s vote followed an initial 16-hour overnight hearing on the House floor. State Rep. Mary González, a Democrat who was once an undocumented immigrant herself, told her colleagues that she was a victim of sexual assault, and that the proposal would actually make Texas less safe by discouraging immigrants from talking to the police when a crime has been committed. “We aren’t exaggerating when we say the people empowered by this piece of the amendment will be criminals,” Gonzalez said. “We aren’t exaggerating when we say the people who will feel the biggest effects of this are the most vulnerable—the women and children who are victims of rape, sexual assault, human trafficking.”

González also beseeched other lawmakers to limit questioning about immigration status to those who were under arrest. “If you ever had any friendship with me, this is the vote that measures that friendship,” González pleaded during the hearing.

According to the Texas Observer, hundreds protested in the Capitol rotunda, where their chants opposing the legislation could be heard during the marathon debate. The protest didn’t dissuade Republican Rep. Matt Schaefer, who added language to the bill that would allow police to check someone’s immigration status during routine “detainments” like traffic stops. “This was about making sure that our law enforcement officers can continue to do what they have a duty to do, which is to make sure that we’re safe,” he said. “That means using every reasonable tool available under the law to inquire about criminal activity.”

State Rep. Ana Hernandez, a Democrat who was also undocumented as a child, fought back tears as she described her fears growing up. “I knew I wasn’t a U.S. citizen, and I feared the reactions from my classmates if they knew I wasn’t a citizen,” Hernandez said. “I see myself in many of those students now that share the same fear of being deported, or having their parents deported.”

Sanctuary city legislation is expected to head to the governor’s desk soon, but local leaders and civil rights advocates opposing the bill say the fight is only getting started, and they plan to file lawsuits challenging the legality of the measure. “The legislature is attempting to blackmail cities into violating our own resident’s constitutional rights,” Austin City Council member Greg Casar said on a press call. “I believe we have no responsibility to follow an unconstitutional law, and we should not be complying with a law that is so discriminatory and dangerous in its mandate.”

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Texas Is About to Crack Down on Undocumented Immigrants

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A Parliament in Australia Just Passed a Motion Declaring Trump a “Revolting Slug”

by LaraeVestal074 Posted on October 14, 2016

Mother Jones

Just after the damning Access Hollywood tape dropped last week, my mom called from my family home in Sydney to tell me Donald Trump was a “sleaze.” Such was the power of the tape: My polite and lovely mom never uses such strong language in referring to political figures.

She’s not alone. Along with the rest of the world, Australians are fiercely monitoring the US campaign for signs of impending global apocalypse. Every morning I awake to an antipodean surge of concern from friends and family on social media, built up over the previous night. But the outrage isn’t restricted to Facebook or private conversations.

Trump creates drama everywhere, even half way around the world in Australia, where issues of race, immigration and the threat of terror are equally divisive and galvanizing for the electorate. Australian politicians have been forced to declare their views on Trump in media appearances. This week, former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, a conservative, appeared to defend Donald Trump, telling a radio show that Trump’s policies were “reasonable enough” and his supporters were “decent people.” But the current PM, Malcolm Turnbull (who replaced Abbott in a dramatic intra-party leadership coup) called Trump’s behavior on the Access Hollywood tape “loathsome.”

The energy minister Josh Frydenberg called Trump “a dropkick.”

Brutal.

But perhaps the most eloquent condemnation of Trump came from one of the houses of state parliament in New South Wales, which, according to Buzzfeed Australia, just passed a unanimous motion to declare Donald Trump a “revolting slug.” The motion—a symbolic declaration of sorts with no real legislative heft—was tendered by a member of the Greens Party:

“I move that this house condemns the misogynistic, hateful comments made by … Mr Donald Trump, about women and minorities, including the remarks revealed over the weekend that clearly describe sexual assault … and agrees with those who have described Mr Trump as ‘a revolting slug’ unfit for public office,” the motion read.

Read the full story over at Buzzfeed. This from their Facebook page sums it up:

It wasn’t immediately clear which “revolting slug” the legislators had in mind. Australia is home to an array of mollusks. Perhaps I could suggest the giant bright pink slug—Triboniophorus aff. graeffei—found in the Mount Kaputar National Park in northern New South Wales:

Meanwhile, in contrast to the US, both Prime Minister Turnbull and his parliamentary opponent, the opposition leader Bill Shorten, recently backed a bipartisan declaration in favor of immigration. “Australia is an immigration nation,” Turnbull said. “Everyone sitting in this chamber and every Australian is a beneficiary of the diversity that is at the heart of our nation.”

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A Parliament in Australia Just Passed a Motion Declaring Trump a “Revolting Slug”

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Pharma Reps Pitched Doctors on Addictive Painkillers by Spelling Out “OxyContin" in Doughnuts

by AngieCharette Posted on September 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the late ’90s, sales reps from pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories faced a conundrum: They wanted to sell the recently introduced painkiller OxyContin to an orthopedic surgeon, but the usual sales tactics weren’t working. They visited the office a couple times, but got the cold shoulder. They pitched him on the drug over lunch‚ but he didn’t seem interested.

When they learned the doctor had a weakness for sweets, they came up with a new plan: deliver a box of with donuts and other treats carefully arranged to spell out the word “OxyContin.” The surprise gift won over the doctor, who began prescribing OxyContin. “We are pleased that we have such a sweet start in developing a relationship with this ‘no-see’ physician,” the sales reps later wrote, “and we’re looking forward to sweet success with OxyContin!”

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The anecdote, which comes from the internal Abbott bulletin above, is part of a trove of recently unsealed court documents detailed in an investigation by health news site STAT. As the story explains, after Purdue Pharma introduced OxyContin in 1996, the company embarked on a massive sales campaign to convince doctors and patients alike on the benefits of treating pain with opioids. Since then, the opioid overdose rate has soared; many experts trace the origins of the epidemic back to Purdue Pharma’s campaign. In 2007, the company and its executives paid a $600 million fine for misleading patients, doctors, and policymakers about the drug’s addictive effects.

But the STAT investigation shows that Purdue was far from alone: Abbott Laboratories had signed on to a partnership with Purdue to promote OxyConton through a series of aggressive, often questionable sales tactics. Under the terms of the partnership, which started in 1996, at least 300 Abbott sales reps launched what they called a “crusade” to sell OxyContin. In return, Abbott received up to 30 percent of net sales. Critically, the deal specified that Abbott would be indemnified from legal costs involved in selling the drug—a move that would later save Abbott millions of dollars and lots of bad press. By 2006, Purdue Pharma claimed $400 in legal fees involving OxyContin. Meanwhile, Abbott had made $374 million in OxyContin commissions by 2002.

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In the “crusade” to sell OxyContin, Abbott sales reps were referred to as “crusaders” and “knights” and sales director Jerry Eichorn was called the “King of Pain.” (Eichorn, who signed memos as “King,” is now the national director of sales for Abbott spinoff AbbVie, which sells Vicodin.) Sales reps were instructed to highlight how the drug has “less abuse/addiction potential” than other painkillers; similar statements would later cost Purdue millions of dollars.

The court documents detailed all sorts of questionable sales strategies: Sales reps paid for take-out lunch at restaurants the doctors liked, giving their pitch in the few minutes it took to pick up the food—a move called the “Dine and Dash.” They gave surgeons bookstore coupons, and pitched the drug while waiting to pay. Top-performing reps—like the doughnut arrangers—were rewarded with prizes, from travel coupons to lottery tickets.

As the internal Abbott bulletin would put it: “All hail the Knights of the Round Table in the Royal Court of OxyContin!”

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Pharma Reps Pitched Doctors on Addictive Painkillers by Spelling Out “OxyContin" in Doughnuts

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The Time Ted Cruz Defended a Ban on Dildos

by MistyMcDowall Posted on April 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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In one chapter of his campaign book, A Time for Truth, Sen. Ted Cruz proudly chronicles his days as a Texas solicitor general, a post he held from 2003 to 2008. Bolstering his conservative cred, the Republican presidential candidate notes that during his stint as the state’s chief lawyer before the Supreme Court and federal and state appellate courts, he defended the inclusion of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, the display of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state capitol, a congressional redistricting plan that assisted Republicans, a restrictive voter identification law, and a ban on late-term abortions. He also described cases in which he championed gun rights and defended the conviction of a Mexican citizen who raped and murdered two teenage girls in a case challenged by the World Court. Yet one case he does not mention is the time he helped defend a law criminalizing the sale of dildos.

The case was actually an important battle concerning privacy and free speech rights. In 2004, companies that owned Austin stores selling sex toys and a retail distributor of such products challenged a Texas law outlawing the sale and promotion of supposedly obscene devices. Under the law, a person who violated the statute could go to jail for up to two years. At the time, only three states—Mississippi, Alabama, and Virginia—had similar laws. (The previous year, a Texas mother who was a sales rep for Passion Parties was arrested by two undercover cops for selling vibrators and other sex-related goods at a gathering akin to a Tupperware party for sex toys. No doubt, this had worried businesses peddling such wares.) The plaintiffs in the sex-device case contended the state law violated the right to privacy under the 14th Amendment. They argued that many people in Texas used sexual devices as an aspect of their sexual experiences. They claimed that in some instances one partner in a couple might be physically unable to engage in intercourse or have a contagious disease (such as HIV) and that in these cases such devices could allow a couple to engage in safe sex.

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The Time Ted Cruz Defended a Ban on Dildos

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The New York Public Library Just Unleashed 180,000 Free Images. We Can’t Stop Looking at Them.

by LoisCraine Posted on January 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Blossom Restaurant, 103 Bowery, Manhattan Bernice Abbott/The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.

The New York Public Library just digitized and made available more than 180,000 high resolution items, which the public can download for free.

The images come from pieces in the library’s collection that have fallen out of copyright or are otherwise in the public domain. This includes botanical illustrations, ancient texts, historical maps–including the incredible Green Book collection of travel guides for African American travelers in mid-1900s. They’ve also released more than 40,000 stereoscopes, Berenice Abbott’s amazing documentation of New York City in 1930s and Lewis Hines’ photos of Ellis Island immigrants, as well as the letters of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, among other political figures.

One of the related projects they’ve created with this release is a cool visualization tool that lets you browse every item released.

It’s a true treasure trove and–warning!–a total time suck.

Say goodbye to your afternoon.

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The New York Public Library Just Unleashed 180,000 Free Images. We Can’t Stop Looking at Them.

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Breaking: Sydney on Lockdown As Dramatic Siege Unfolds

by Glory Miche Posted on December 15, 2014

Mother Jones

The heart of Sydney, Australia, is currently in lockdown, as a siege unfolds at a downtown cafe. Reporting is still fuzzy and ongoing, but here’s what we know so far: Police are responding to a situation at the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, a central plaza in the city surrounded by banks and law firms, and not far from the state parliament buildings and the Sydney Opera House.

The number of hostages taken have not been confirmed. Channel Seven, a TV station with studios and offices in Martin Place, is reporting police sources as saying there are 13 people being held. The number of hostage-takers has also not been confirmed.

Twitter users have posted images of people, apparently hostages, with their hands against the windows of the cafe and holding up a black flag with Arabic writing on it. Guardian Australia is reporting the flag reads, “There is no god but the God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.” It is not the Islamic State flag. Large parts of the area have been cordoned off.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which has unlocked its live stream for an international audience, is providing rolling coverage. Channel Seven is also providing live coverage here.

The Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has released a statement saying his government is convening an emergency session of the National Security Committee of Cabinet:

UPDATE: Sunday, December 14, 2014, 9 p.m. EST: The Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has addressed reporters in Australia’s capital, Canberra. He didn’t provide any further factual detail about the unfolding saga in Sydney. Notably, he did not outline potential reasons for the attack. “We don’t yet know the motivation of the perpetrator,” he said, though he added that “obviously there are some indications” the attack could be political in nature. Abbott said the normal business of government would continue:

I can understand the concerns and anxieties of the Australian people at a time like this, but our thoughts and prayers must above all go out to the individuals who are caught up in this. I can think of almost nothing more distressing, more terrifying than to be caught up in such a situation and our hearts go out to these people.

UPDATE 2: Monday, December 15, 2014, 12:15 a.m. EST: It appears that at least three hostages have gotten free, though whether they escaped or were released is not yet clear.

As things unfold, we’ve compiled a list of sources on Twitter to follow. Find it here.

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Breaking: Sydney on Lockdown As Dramatic Siege Unfolds

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The World’s Biggest Climate Villain Just Agreed to Help Fight Global Warming

by MarceloKirke Posted on December 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Prime Minister of Australia is called Abbott. His deputy, Bishop. And together they head a group of ministers who are running an anti-climate campaign with an almost religious fervor.

In a report issued this week by Climate Action Network Europe and Germanwatch, Australia was ranked as the “worst industrial country in the world” on climate action—and second-worst among all countries, above only Saudi Arabia. Australia’s open hostility toward climate action began in earnest last year, when the right-wing Liberal Party led by Prime Minister Tony Abbott took power in a landslide victory. So far, Abbott’s team has repealed carbon pricing laws, scrapped or eroded funding for government agencies that deal with climate policy, and spoken out against the UN’s international Green Climate Fund, which is designed to help poorer countries fight the effects of global warming.

Now, at least one of those things has changed. This week, Deputy Prime Minister Julie Bishop—who is also the country’s minister for foreign affairs—finally caved to international pressure and announced a $200 million (AUD) commitment to the Green Climate Fund. That’s about $166 million (US). “Our pledge to the Green Climate Fund will facilitate private sector-led economic growth in our region,” she said this week at the UN climate talks in Lima, Peru. Bishop added that the plan would allow Australia to “focus on investment, infrastructure, energy, forestry and emissions reductions.” Australia joins 21 other nations, including the United States, which last month announced a contribution of $3 billion.

The fund has become an important focal point of international climate negotiations because poorer countries typically get the rough end of global warming: Not only are they more likely to feel the brunt of its impacts—such as rising sea levels and increased extreme weather—they also don’t have enough money to face the problem. Meanwhile, rich countries are largely to blame for the crisis. The fund tries to remedy that imbalance.

Australia’s announcement is a policy back-flip. Asked about the UN fund before a climate meeting in Warsaw last year, Abbott said, “We’re not going to be making any contributions to that.” He’s also called the fund a “Bob Brown bank.” Let me explain that one: It’s an attack on the former leader of Australia’s left-wing Greens Party, whom Abbott loves to caricature as the sort of bleeding-heart, tree-hugging socialist who only knows how to wreck an economy. To American ears, it’s basically like the Republican trope around Obama’s job-killing “war on coal.”

Australia faced strong criticism from European nations after its negotiators engaged in what one European official described as “trench warfare” in an attempt to prevent the fund’s inclusion in a G20 communiqué following a G20 summit in Brisbane last month. Australia also refused to join other world leaders at a conference in Berlin last month that was aimed at raising $10 billion for the fund.

And wow, did Abbott sound utterly miserable when he was asked about the government’s dramatic reversal in the face of international pressure. (He’s quite transparent when he doesn’t like something.) The video of Abbott reacting to the funding announcement is telling.

“Well…” Big, exasperated sigh. “Look, uh…” Sad face. Big Pause. “You know…” he went on.

Abbott now admits that he did make “various comments some time ago” criticizing the fund, but he says that “we’ve seen things develop over the last few months.” Indeed, a lot has happened over the last few months that might have helped change Abbott’s mind. The Canadians—with whom he’s enjoyed a kind of anti-climate bromance—recently agreed to cough up cash for the fund. Last month, Abbott was humiliated at his very own party—the G20 meeting in Brisbane—when world leaders ganged up on him in the dispute over the communiqué. And then there was the news that China, Australia’s massive trading partner, had inked a landmark emissions reduction deal with Australia’s most important ally, the United States.

Now, Abbott’s message has grudgingly changed: “I think it’s now fair and reasonable for the government to make a modest, prudent and proportionate commitment to this climate mitigation fund: I think that is something that a sensible government does,” he said. “That money will be strictly invested in practical projects in our region.”

The announcement was praised, hesitantly, by environmental groups. There was, after all, a catch. The money will be drawn from Australia’s existing international aid budget—a budget has already been cut by $7 billion over the next five years.

Climate success or otherwise, these developments appear to be a fascinating continuation of the “climate change as political kryptonite” narrative that has dominated Australian politics for years. As Lenore Taylor, political editor for the Guardian Australia, once told me, climate change is the “killing fields” of Aussie politics. And now it appears the guns are out and loaded once more—dividing the cabinet and leaving the leader out on a limb.

Bishop was, at first, reportedly blocked by the prime minister’s office from even traveling to Peru for the UN meeting—Australia has recently spurned climate meetings. But Bishop is perhaps the most popular minister in an increasingly unpopular government, and she took the disagreement to the nation’s cabinet, which overruled the boss. Then, Australia’s political press was laced with anonymous sources suggesting that Bishop was furious—”went bananas,” according to one—when she learned she would be not be traveling alone to represent Australia. Instead, Bishop would be accompanied by another minister (described in the Australian press as a “chaperone“), reportedly to make sure she didn’t get swept up in the momentum to get a global emissions deal done—something that Abbott has desperately tried to avoid. (Bishop has denied she was angry).

Discord! Strife! Media intrigue! It would all seem so petty if it weren’t part of a familiar pattern, one that’s deeply foreign to American politics: Climate policy has hung over Australia’s politicians like a dark storm cloud since at least 2006, and it has been instrumental in the downfall of multiple political leaders. Here’s a short summary:

2009: The conservative opposition party (called the Liberal Party) replaced its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who supported a cap-and-trade scheme, with Tony Abbott, a man who is vehemently opposed to the idea.
In the meantime, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd—from the Labor party—failed to get the votes to pass his carbon legislation through parliament and subsequently was overthrown by a popular deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard, who promised not to introduce carbon legislation.
Gillard did in fact introduce carbon pricing in 2011. Cue vitriolic opposition from an invigorated conservative opposition led by Abbott. Gillard’s popularity plummeted as opponents attacked her credibility; she was then challenged and defeated by a resurgent Kevin Rudd, in 2013.
Abbott took office in a landslide and has proceeded to repeal the carbon legislation, which he called a “toxic tax.”

Signs that Bishop may be using climate change to outflank her leader must be worrying to Abbott. As one political commentator put it: “smaller slights than this have proved the defining moment in the descent into division of governments past. A bushfire can begin with just one match.”

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The World’s Biggest Climate Villain Just Agreed to Help Fight Global Warming

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Wendy Davis Spent $36 Million and All She Got Was This Lousy Landslide. Now What?

by Myron83Nao Posted on November 5, 2014

Mother Jones

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Oops. Last year, fresh from a presidential reelection campaign in which it was hailed for its 21st-century tactics and organizing prowess, a group of Obama for America veterans descended on Texas with the goal of turning the state purple. They launched a new group, Battleground Texas, raised millions from wealthy donors, and teamed up with a rising Democratic star running for statewide office. What happened next will…probably not shock you.

In the first test-drive for Battleground Texas, Democrats got trounced, losing every statewide race for the 16th consecutive election. In the much-hyped governor’s race, state Sen. Wendy Davis lost to Attorney General Greg Abbott by 21 points. She fared only two points better than the sacrificial lamb running for agriculture commissioner, who didn’t campaign at all. But Republicans didn’t just fend off Davis, or rile up their base against a Democrat whom activists mocked as “abortion Barbie”—they ran up the score, and did so in all the places where Democrats were supposed to take baby steps.

When Battleground Texas first launched, 2014 was considered too much, too soon. But when Davis entered the race, fresh off of an 11-hour filibuster of an anti-abortion bill, the calculus changed. The group merged its offices with Davis’ gubernatorial campaign, set about building an army of 34,000 canvassers, lawyers, and voter-registration volunteers, and looked to pick off low-hanging fruit wherever it could.

The idea was that an Obama-style organizing operation could make a real impact in down-ballot races, which are traditionally less sophisticated. It didn’t.

Battleground invested in a dozen state-legislature races, targeting House and Senate districts that will have to turn purple for anyone at the top of the ticket to have a chance—East Dallas, the Houston suburbs, and a South Texas seat held by a party-switching state represenative. Democrats didn’t win a single one, and most of the races weren’t even close. In Harris County (Houston), where Democrats talked of tapping into the roughly 800,000 nonregistered potential voters, Davis lost by four points. (The Dem’s 2010 nominee, Bill White, won it by two.) In the final indignity, Democrats even lost Davis’ state Senate seat to a pro-life tea party Republican.

“Tonight’s decisive victory proves they picked the wrong battleground,” boasted GOP state Sen. Dan Patrick, who won the race for lieutenant governor by 19 points, despite an almost concerted effort to alienate Hispanic voters. (He warned, at one point, that child migrants might bring Ebola with them across the border.)

Soon-to-be-Senator Abbott had a low bar to clear, and he did so easily. Davis hammered him for comparing law enforcement corruption in heavily Hispanic South Texas to that of a “Third-world country,” and for refusing to say whether, as attorney general, he would hypothetically defend a hypothetical Texas law banning interracial marriage. (Abbott’s wife, Cecilia, is Mexican-American.) His simple response was to show up in South Texas and campaign seriously. It paid off: Abott won 44 percent of Latino voters, according to exit polling—including a plurality of Latino men.

And, in a sprawling, heavily Hispanic district that stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, Republicans unseated Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego. His replacement: Will Hurd, a former CIA agent who will be Texas’ first black Republican congressman since Reconstruction.

One silver lining for Battleground Texas is that no one was even running in some of these races two years ago. On Wednesday, the organization released a detailed memo from Senior Adviser Jeremy Bird and Executive Director Jenn Brown outlining their accomplishments and vowing to fight on: “We said from the beginning that turning Texas into a battleground will take time and commitment—and we’re just getting started.” Among their wins: a more potent fundraising operation, a growing voter database, and a nugget from the exit polls: higher percentages of young voters, women voters, and minority voters than in 2010.

But the voters just weren’t going for Davis. Even though Battleground boasted of having trained 8,700 new voter-registration volunteers, the overall voter turnout dropped by 300,000 from 2010. Absent any sort of marquee victory to call its own, the fate of Battleground is now outside its control. Texas Democrats won’t have another big election for four years—plenty of time to lose interest—and, well, something else might come up in the interim.

When I dropped by the group’s Fort Worth headquarters in September, I asked director Brown if she’d consider leaving her post to work for Hillary Clinton’s almost certain presidential campaign. She laughed and looked down at the mostly blank paper in front of her.

“The most important thing about Battleground Texas is that it is a Texas-run organization,” she said. “It’s not about me—I just am lucky to be a part of it, so I actually think no matter who runs it, whether it’s me or something else, ultimately, we don’t actually run the organization.”

So, Battleground took a shellacking in its first test run. Now comes the hard part.

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Wendy Davis Spent $36 Million and All She Got Was This Lousy Landslide. Now What?

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If Wendy Davis Thinks She Can Win an Election by Pointing Out Her Opponent’s Disability, She’s Wrong

by HollyChowne Posted on October 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Wendy Davis just released an ad attacking Greg Abbott, her opponent for governor in Texas, which is, to be blunt, bullshit. It’s offensive and nasty and it shouldn’t exist. She’s basically calling Abbott a cripple.

There are a lot of good reasons not to like Greg Abbott. The fact that he’s in a wheelchair isn’t one of them.

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If Wendy Davis Thinks She Can Win an Election by Pointing Out Her Opponent’s Disability, She’s Wrong

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This Pharmacist Is One of Greg Abbott’s Biggest Donors. Here’s Why.

by UBZJacelyn Posted on May 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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Greg Abbott, the Republican attorney general of Texas, has many of the usual suspects funding his gubernatorial campaign: Energy tycoons, construction company magnates, leveraged buyout moguls, sports team owners. But one of his biggest backers hails from an industry not typically known for bankrolling political campaigns. J. Richard “Richie” Ray is the owner of a compounding pharmacy, one of those loosely regulated entities that have been mixing up lethal injection drug cocktails for prisons as these pharmaceuticals have become harder and harder to obtain. According to a new report from the nonprofit Texans for Public Justice, Ray, the owner of Richie’s Specialty Pharmacy in Conroe, Texas, has given Abbott $350,000 to help him defeat democratic challenger Wendy Davis.

Ray’s big investment in Abbott comes as death row inmates and good-government groups are trying to force Texas to disclose the supplier of its lethal injection drugs, thought to be a compounding pharmacy. The pharmacies themselves are under fire for selling tainted and mislabled medicine that has killed dozens of people in recent years. During Abbott’s tenure as AG, he has already taken on one Texas compounder, ApotheCure, after three people in Oregon died after taking painkillers from the pharmacy that were eight times more potent than the label indicated. (In 2012, Abbott settled state civil charges against the company.) Last summer, tainted medicine from an Austin compounding pharmacy caused blood infections in 17 people; two deaths are suspected to be related to the products, which are still under investigation.

Abbott is also in the middle of a pitched legal battle over whether the state has to identify the supplier of its lethal injection drugs. Over the past several years, international pharma companies have started refusing to sell execution drugs, including pentobarbital, to US prisons for use in lethal injections, and the EU has banned their export. This has left state prisons desperate to find replacement drugs to continue moving the machinery of death. After several states were caught illegally importing the drugs from abroad, state officials have tried obtaining their execution drugs from compounding pharmacies, which can legally mix them up but that have been plagued with problems like those in Texas. Defense lawyers have argued that their condemned clients have a right to know what they’re going to be injected with to ensure that the executions will not violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and they’ve cited the well-documented problems with drugs produced by compounders in their challenges. The botched execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma only reinforced those claims.

In October, in response to a formal request under the state’s open-records law, staff who handle such requests in the AG’s office said Texas law required disclosure of the execution drug supplier, a move that resulted in the exposure of Woodlands Compounding Pharmacy as the state’s lethal injection supplier. Woodlands promptly quit supplying execution drugs. As a result, the state is now fighting disclosure of the name of its new supplier, and Abbott is caught in the middle, with his lawyers arguing in state and federal court that the name of the pharmacy doesn’t have to be disclosed, even as his open-records staff say it does.

In the midst of all this controversy, Richie Ray has become a major donor Abbott’s campaign. He gave $100,000 in June 2013, just before the state bought several doses of compounded pentobarbital from a compounding pharmacy. (By comparison, Ray has given only a little more than $40,000 to Rick Perry’s campaigns.) Ray’s pharmacy is not supplying execution drugs to the state, according to the Texans for Public Justice report, apparently because his pharmacy isn’t certified as a “sterile” facility. However, Richie’s is a member of the Professional Compounding Centers of America (PCCA), a Houston-based national trade group that not only owns the lab that tested some of the state’s compounded execution drugs for purity but also sold Woodlans the raw materials to make one of the drugs.

Ray himself is active in fighting tougher regulation of compounding pharmacies. He’s the director of the Texas Pharmacy Association PAC and chairman of the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists’ federal PAC. His employees are the top donors to the campaign of Sen. John Barasso (R-WY), a doctor and the Senate’s leading defender of compounding pharmacies like ApotheCure.

Given the massive conflicts between his current job and one of his biggest campaign contributors, Abbott can only hope that defense lawyers manage to drag out the legal battles over lethal injection long enough for him to get elected in November.

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This Pharmacist Is One of Greg Abbott’s Biggest Donors. Here’s Why.

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