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Science for Sale – David L. Lewis, PhD

by Myrna Posted on September 3, 2017

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Science for Sale

How the US Government Uses Powerful Corporations and Leading Universities to Support Government Policies, Silence Top Scientists, Jeopardize Our Health, and Protect Corporate Profits

David L. Lewis, PhD

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: June 3, 2014

Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing

Seller: The Perseus Books Group, LLC


When Speaker Newt Gingrich greeted Dr. David Lewis in his office overlooking the National Mall, he looked at Dr. Lewis and said: “You know you’re going to be fired for this, don’t you?” “I know,” Dr. Lewis replied, “I just hope to stay out of prison.” Gingrich had just read Dr. Lewis’s commentary in Nature , titled “EPA Science: Casualty of Election Politics.” Three years later, and thirty years after Dr. Lewis began working at EPA, he was back in Washington to receive a Science Achievement Award from Administrator Carol Browner for his second article in Nature . By then, EPA had transferred Dr. Lewis to the University of Georgia to await termination—the Agency’s only scientist to ever be lead author on papers published in Nature and Lancet . The government hires scientists to support its policies; industry hires them to support its business; and universities hire them to bring in grants that are handed out to support government policies and industry practices. Organizations dealing with scientific integrity are designed only to weed out those who commit fraud behind the backs of the institutions where they work. The greatest threat of all is the purposeful corruption of the scientific enterprise by the institutions themselves. The science they create is often only an illusion, designed to deceive; and the scientists they destroy to protect that illusion are often our best. This book is about both, beginning with Dr. Lewis’s experience, and ending with the story of Dr. Andrew Wakefield.

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Science for Sale – David L. Lewis, PhD

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CBO: If Obamacare Is Repealed, Premiums Will Skyrocket and Millions Will Lose Coverage

by JeromeHartz Posted on January 17, 2017

Mother Jones

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A few days ago Newt Gingrich wrote a jeremiad against the Congressional Budget Office, which acts as the official scorekeeper for the effect of legislation. It was obsolete, corrupt, left-wing, etc. etc. and simply didn’t know how to account for a dynamic, entrepreneurial, red-tape-cutter like Donald Trump.

Gingrich’s real problem, of course, is that the CBO is required to stick close to reality, which means that it often produces projections and estimates that are inconvenient for Republicans. Take today, for example. Senate Democrats asked for an estimate of what would happen if Obamacare were repealed. Here’s the CBO’s answer:

18 million people would lose insurance. By 2026, that would increase to 32 million.
Premiums in the individual market would skyrocket, increasing 20-25 percent in the first year and about 50 percent by 2026.
Insurers would exit the individual market en masse. About half the nation’s population would live in areas with no individual insurers at all, rising to three-quarters by 2026.

That is inconvenient, isn’t it? This is what happens if you eliminate Obamacare but keep in place the ban on pre-existing conditions—which Republicans all say they support and which they can’t repeal anyway. Premiums would skyrocket, 32 million people would lose coverage, and insurers would abandon about three-quarters of the country.

This is what Republicans need to address with their “replace” plan. But they can’t do it and they know it.

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CBO: If Obamacare Is Repealed, Premiums Will Skyrocket and Millions Will Lose Coverage

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Donald Trump’s Mafia Approach to Governing Has Officially Started

by BlairMullah Posted on December 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Judd Legum of ThinkProgress reports that “members of the Trump Organization” pressured the government of Kuwait to switch their annual National Day celebration from the Four Seasons to the Trump International:

In the early fall, the Kuwaiti Embassy signed a contract with the Four Seasons. But after the election, members of the Trump Organization contacted the Ambassador of Kuwait, Salem Al-Sabah, and encouraged him to move his event to Trump’s D.C. hotel, the source said.

Kuwait has now signed a contract with the Trump International Hotel, the source said, adding that a representative with the embassy described the decision as political. Invitations to the event are typically sent out in January.

Abdulaziz Alqadfan, First Secretary of the Embassy of Kuwait, told ThinkProgress last week that he couldn’t “confirm or deny” that the National Day event would be held at the Trump Hotel. Reached again Monday afternoon, Alqadfan did not offer any comment. An email sent directly to Ambassador Al-Sabah was not immediately returned.

Legum writes that his source is a person “who has direct knowledge of the arrangements between the hotels and the embassy,” and that he was able to “review documentary evidence confirming the source’s account.” I have a feeling that a lot of foreign governments are going to be getting phone calls from the Trump Organization over the next four years.

Now, Trump’s defense, if he bothers to offer one, will be that nothing happened. Someone in his company made a sales call to the Kuwaiti government, offered them a deal they couldn’t refuse, and closed the business. What’s wrong with that? But Newt Gingrich has a whole different idea about how Trump should deal with potential violations of the law:

“We’ve never seen this kind of wealth in the White House, and so traditional rules don’t work,” Gingrich said Monday during an appearance on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” about the president-elect’s business interests. “We’re going to have to think up a whole new approach.”

And should someone in the Trump administration cross the line, Gingrich has a potential answer for that too.

“In the case of the president, he has a broad ability to organize the White House the way he wants to. He also has, frankly, the power of the pardon,” Gingrich said. “It’s a totally open power. He could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anyone finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period. Technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”

Jeez, it’s too bad we didn’t have this Newt Gingrich around in the 90s. He and Bill Clinton would have gotten along a lot better if he’d had this kind of charitable attitude toward presidential ethics back then.

On a more serious note: Are you fucking kidding me? The Trump Organization is going to poach business away by “encouraging” foreign governments to see the benefits of holding their events at a Trump property? And Newt Gingrich thinks we should just go ahead and change the law to allow this kind of thing? And if nobody salutes when that gets run up the old flagpole, then Trump should just go ahead and issue pardons to anyone who gets harassed by overzealous prosecutors.

What country do I live in, anyway?

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Donald Trump’s Mafia Approach to Governing Has Officially Started

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Conservatives Discover That Racism Is Real After All

by Lavern49Swiybx Posted on November 15, 2016

Mother Jones

So here’s an interesting thing. Let’s start off with Newt Gingrich, asked about Steve Bannon’s advocacy of the alt-right:

The left is infuriated that anybody would challenge the legitimacy of their moral superiority. And so the left is hysterical…You get this with all the smears of Steve Bannon. I never heard about the alt-right until the nut cakes started writing about it.

Huh. It’s just a lefty smear. Let’s ask Bannon himself about this. Here is Sarah Posner:

“We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July….During our interview, Bannon took credit for fomenting “this populist nationalist movement” long before Trump came on the scene. He credited Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.)—a Trump endorser and confidant who has suggested that civil rights advocacy groups were “un-American” and “Communist-inspired”—with laying the movement’s groundwork.

I guess that clears things up. What’s interesting here is that a fair number of longtime conservatives were #NeverTrumpers during the presidential campaign, and they got a very up-close-and-personal look at just what the alt-right was like. National Review’s David French, for example, started a recent essay like this: “Trump’s alt-right trolls have subjected me and my family to an unending torrent of abuse that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.” Click the link if you have a strong stomach. Today, Ian Tuttle joins him:

Under Bannon’s aegis, something ugly has taken hold of the Right.

In March 2012, Bannon — an investment banker-turned-conservative documentarian — became chairman of Breitbart News….Under Bannon’s leadership…the site built up its viewer base by catering to the alt-right, a small but vocal fringe of white supremacists, anti-Semites, and Internet trolls.

….The alt-right is not a “fabrication” of the media….If ethnic and religious minorities are worried, it’s in part because Donald Trump and his intimates have spent the last several months winking at one of the ugliest political movements in America’s recent history.

….Furthermore, as some on the left have been more attuned to than their conservative counterparts, the problem is not whether Bannon himself subscribes to a noxious strain of political nuttery; it’s that his de facto endorsement of it enables it to spread and to claim legitimacy, and that what is now a vicious fringe could, over time, become mainstream….To conservative and liberal alike, that he has the ear of the next president of the United States (a man of no particular convictions, and loyal to no particular principles) should be a source of grave concern.

Under normal circumstances, the entire conservative movement would be in Newt Gingrich’s corner: Bannon is no racist and the alt-right is just a figment of the hysterical left. But during the campaign, lots of mainstream conservatives were targets of the alt-right. They saw firsthand just how vicious it is and just how real it is. This time, they can’t write it off.

Bannon is an ugly, ugly character. He promoted the alt-right; he loves the right-wing nationalist parties of Europe; and his ex-wife says that he’s personally anti-semitic. The movement he nurtured is dedicated to “white rights,” loudly and proudly. And that has consequences: the FBI announced today that hate crimes were up 6 percent in 2015, “fueled by attacks on Muslims.” Al Franken has this one right:

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Conservatives Discover That Racism Is Real After All

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Jeb Bush’s Lobbying Reform Plan Probably Won’t Rein In K Street

by Irene86Ggqr Posted on July 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush says he wants to curb the influence of lobbyists in Washington—starting with stanching the flow of lawmakers who leave Congress to cash in on K Street as influence peddlers. “We need to help politicians discover life outside of Washington,” he said during a speech on Monday, during which he proposed an array of lobbying reforms. The centerpiece is a six-year ban on ex-members of Congress going into the lobbying business. (Currently, House members can officially start lobbying one year after leaving office and ex-senators must wait two years.) Government transparency advocates were heartened by Bush’s remarks, but they say the moratorium alone won’t solve the problem.

The issue is that the six-year ban would only prevent former members of Congress from taking part in “official” lobbying—a very specifically defined set of activities. Avoid those activities—or earn less than 20 percent of your income from lobbying activities—and you can avoid registering as a lobbyist. There’s no shortage of high-profile ex-lawmakers who have used this loophole to sell their insider expertise and thick Rolodexes to the highest bidder without ever registering as a lobbyist. Former Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle has worked for three lobbying firms since his departure from Congress 10 years ago, never once officially registering as a lobbyist. Instead, Daschle has served as a “senior policy advisor.” Similarly, upon leaving Congress in 1999, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich immediately went to work for a number of private interests offering “quasi-lobbying” services, but called his work anything but lobbying. Notably, Gingrich was paid $1.65 million for his work as a “historian” for mortgage lender Freddie Mac.

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Jeb Bush’s Lobbying Reform Plan Probably Won’t Rein In K Street

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Listen: Rush Limbaugh’s New Kids Book Features Pilgrims, Horse Snot

by Fredric6271 Posted on November 28, 2013

Mother Jones

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Searching for holiday gifts that will educate and entertain a special, impressionable someone? Look no further than these great works of children’s literature by conservative pundits.

Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims (2013)

Author: Rush Limbaugh

Summary: A time-traveling substitute history teacher hitches a ride on the Mayflower.

Excerpt: “…maybe now would be a good time to time-jump back to modern-day America and get some seasickness pills.”

Don’t tell the kids: The pill-popping author once compared a 13-year-old girl to a dog.

Listen to El Rushbo read an exciting passage about the Pilgrim’s snot-drenched (skip to 1:30) passage to America:

A Is for Abigail: An Almanac of Amazing American Women (2003)

Author: Lynne Cheney

Summary: Biographical sketches of famous ladies, including Rosa Parks and Sandra Day O’Connor

Excerpt: “D is for Emily Dickinson, our country’s greatest poet.”

Don’t tell the kids: Cheney’s debut novel, Sisters, features a racy lesbian scene.

Sweet Land of Liberty (2011)

Author: Callista Gingrich

Summary: A time-traveling elephant explores events in American history.

Excerpt: “Ellis the Elephant was a smart little guy, with a curly grey trunk, and a twinkling eye. He liked asking questions, he was eager to see how America became the land of the free.”

Don’t tell the kids: The Gingrich staffer who wore an Ellis costume at book signings was charged with blackmailing women with nude photos.

Callista Gingrich and a disappointingly well-behaved Ellis promo their book:

The O’Reilly Factor for Kids: A Survival Guide for America’s Families (2004)

Author: Bill O’Reilly

Summary: Papa Bear offers life advice to adolescents.

Excerpt: “Bullies are cowards…This chapter is for anyone who is being bullied, but it’s also for the fools who are bullies.”

Don’t tell the kids: Bill O’Reilly makes more than $10 million a year being a bully.

This book trailer captures just how “hip” and “with it” he is.

The Christmas Sweater (2008)

Author: Glenn Beck

Summary: Eddie discovers the true meaning of Christmas after getting an ugly sweater.

Excerpt: “Eddie shook his snow globe one last time and placed it on the dresser beside his bed. He watched the snowstorm swirl and thought about the one gift he wanted most for Christmas—a new bicycle.”

Don’t tell the kids: A pair of artisanal, selvage blue jeans from Beck’s personal brand sell for $129 a pair.

The perfect addition to the library in your family’s bunker!

Can’t Wait Till Christmas (2010)

Author: Mike Huckabee

Summary: Mike discovers the meaning of Christmas after prematurely unwrapping the new football he wanted.

Excerpt: “He had been counting down the days since July. And at the very top of his wish-list was a football. Not just any football—a brown leather J.C. Higgins regulation-size football.”

Don’t tell the kids: It looks like Huckabee regifted Beck’s Christmas story.

Dubs Goes to Washington and Discovers the Greatness of America (2011)

Author: GOP consultant (and ex-Clinton adviser) Dick Morris

Summary: A golden retriever gets lost in the capital while searching for a ball.

Excerpt: “If people are equal can it possibly be/That dogs are too…especially me?”

Don’t tell the kids: That whole toe fetish thing.

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Listen: Rush Limbaugh’s New Kids Book Features Pilgrims, Horse Snot

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