Tag: Democrats

Scaling down his “build back better” plans, President Joe Biden has described a more limited vision to Democratic lawmakers of a $2 trillion government-overhaul package with at least $500 billion to tackle climate change and money for middle-class priorities — child tax credits, paid family leave, health care and free pre-kindergarten.

Barring infirmity, Joe Biden is likely to serve out his four-year term. For political reasons, despite the manifest failure of his presidency and his party’s terror of what lies ahead, he has a winning hand.

The forever war between America’s pharmaceutical industry and America’s public interest is approaching a climactic moment. At stake is whether Big Pharma and its allies will keep drug prices zooming upward, or whether the federal government can slow that rise by negotiating prices for some expensive drugs taken by Medicare beneficiaries. The U.S. House of Representatives is poised to vote on legislation requiring such negotiations in the next few days as a crucial element of the $3.5 trillion budget plan, and the drug industry is in overdrive to make sure that doesn’t happen.

By pure chance, I listened to “Science Friday” on National Public Radio while on a Florida road trip last September 24. I heard host Ira Flatow interview New York Times climate reporter Coral Davenport. The transcript is posted online at Congress Is Considering Two Climate Change Bills. What’s In Them? (sciencefriday.com). The podcast is at September 24, 2021 - Science Friday

As a member of the U.S. government’s security apparatus, I have witnessed a level of groupthink that would shock even the most accredited academics associated with the leading internationalist think tanks. As the professional class of international relations thinkers and their elitist dopamine peddlers in mainstream media continue launching their crusade against the so-called threat of populism, the people are again being actively pushed out of foreign and domestic policy. The boogieman-version of populism that is being thrust upon cable news viewers is not entirely accurate. This misconstrued definition in the modern American lexicon purports that populism is synonymous with authoritarian strongmen who intend to push nativist policies inherently referred to as racist.