[mpen-dayton] FW: "Tuesday: Trumpcare vote" & "Sen. Sanders Endorses Ohio Drug Price Relief Act" & "Don’t let Trump Republicans gut Wall Street reform" and more
FYI. Best, Munsup
P.S. Please reply back to me with 'unsubscribe' added to the subject line if you no longer want to receive my e-Newsletters. The convenient link to unsubscribe is no longer available due to security reasons to protect my email servers.
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- FW: NYT Today's Headline: Congress Reaches Deal on Russia Sanctions, Setting Up Tough Choice for Trump
- FW: John McCain to return to Senate Tuesday for health care vote
- FW: Tuesday: Trumpcare vote
- FW: U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders Endorses Ohio Drug Price Relief Act
- FW: Drug Executive Behind $1000 Pill Now Enjoys New Nickname Billion Dollar Man
- FW: No Russia collusion, Trump son-in-law Kushner tells Congress
- FW: Revoke Kushner's Security Clearance
- FW: What Does Russiagate Look Like to Russians?
- FW: See Dalma Grandjean's new post in your group Brainstorming for a Blue Ohio
- FW: Sign the petition: Don't let Trump Republicans gut Wall Street reform
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From: 
Subject: Today's Headlines: Congress Reaches Deal on Russia Sanctions, Setting Up Tough Choice for Trump
Congress Reaches Deal on Russia Sanctions, Setting Up Tough Choice for Trump
By MATT FLEGENHEIMER and DAVID E. SANGER
White House officials acknowledge that the president would all but have to sign legislation punishing Russia for its election interference.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/24/politics/john-mccain-returns-health-care-vote/index.html
John McCain to return to Senate Tuesday for health care vote
By Manu Raju and Lauren Fox, CNN; Updated 9:31 PM ET, Mon July 24, 2017
(CNN) Sen. John McCain, recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, will make a dramatic return to the Senate Tuesday to cast a critical vote on health care legislation.
McCain's office announced Monday night he will return Tuesday. His return will amount to a surprise to most Republicans, who expected him to miss the crucial vote and return to Washington at a later date. But he could help the GOP deliver a critical vote to begin debating health care legislation, which is on the verge of collapsing.
"Senator McCain looks forward to returning to the United States Senate tomorrow to continue working on important legislation, including health care reform, the National Defense Authorization Act, and new sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea," his office said in a statement.
The Arizona Republican underwent brain surgery earlier this month and announced last week he has been diagnosed with brain cancer.
Just hours before the announcement was made, McCain's colleagues expressed doubts that he'd be in the chamber in time for the vote.
"I don't have any expectation at this point," Sen. John Thune told reporters earlier Monday. "And I don't know that anyone else I talked to does."
McCain's arrival back to the Senate, however, doesn't guarantee leaders will have the votes they need to begin debate. With McCain back in Washington, McConnell can now afford to lose just two of his members.
From: Nita and Shaunna, UltraViolet
Subject: TOMORROW: Trumpcare vote
As early as tomorrow, the Senate will vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with Trumpcare.1 So now is the last chance to call.
Mariana in Youngstown, Ohio, is depending on you to call. Mariana has a pre-existing condition (multiple sclerosis) and Trumpcare means her insurer can refuse to cover her condition. Jamie in Phoenix is also depending on you--Jamie's struggle with endometriosis and ovarian cysts means she needs the ACA's guarantee of no-copay birth control just to make it to work each day. Meanwhile, Theresa in Reno, Nevada, has a 2-year-old child, Dean, who was born with a special heart condition and is depending on the ACA for his third surgery scheduled to happen in the next year. If Trumpcare passes, annual and lifetime caps on benefits will return, and Dean's surgery could send Theresa and her family into bankruptcy.
All of these people are UltraViolet members with senators who either remain undecided on Trumpcare or need to be reminded of their commitment to voting no--just like your senator, Senator Rob Portman. Your call could make the difference we need to protect the Affordable Care Act. Can you make a call NOW?
Here's the number to call: Sen. Portman - (202) 224-3353
Will you make an urgent call to Sen. Portman now?
Speak in your own words, but here are some points to guide you:
- My name is Munsup and I'm from Dayton. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is important to me because (if you have a personal story, share it here!).
- The Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion has provided health insurance to millions of the neediest people in the United States. If you vote for a repeal, it will kick these people off of their plans and prevent millions more from getting the health care they need and deserve.2
- The Affordable Care Act protects guaranteed coverage for life-saving cervical and breast cancer screenings, comprehensive maternity care and domestic violence screenings, and birth control. If you vote to repeal the ACA, insurance companies looking to make a buck will stop offering policies covering these vital health care services, which tens of millions of women rely on.3
- The Affordable Care Act provides important consumer affordability protections, like requiring insurance companies to cover a certain percentage of out of pocket expenses, and a ban on lifetime or annual "caps" on coverage. If you vote to repeal it, it will literally throw families into bankruptcy.4
Make a call today to protect the Affordable Care Act.
Sources:
- Republicans' push to roll back Obamacare faces crucial test, CNBC, July 24, 2017
- Medicaid's Role for Women, Kaiser Family Foundation, June 22, 2017
- Summary of the Affordable Care Act, Kaiser Family Foundation, April 25, 2013
Preventive care benefits for women, Healthcare.gov, accessed July 18, 2017
The Affordable Care Act's Birth Control Benefit Is Working for Women, National Women's Law Center, December 16, 2016 - Ibid.
Want to support our work? UltraViolet is funded by members like you, and our tiny staff ensures small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.
From: David P. Little
Subject: U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders Endorses Ohio Drug Price Relief Act
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders Endorses Ohio Drug Price Relief Act
Sanders says "Vote Yes" on Issue 2 in November to lower drug prices and save taxpayer dollars
For Immediate Release
July 24, 2017
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"Our campaign is honored to be endorsed by Sen. Sanders. We look forward to working with him and other leaders across the state and country as we lower drug prices and save taxpayers millions of dollars. He is one of many who know it's time to take on corporate greed in America and hold these huge drug companies accountable for putting profits over people," said Dennis Willard, Yes on Issue 2 spokesperson.
Vote Yes on Issue 2 is a broad-based, bi-partisan coalition. More than 200,000 Ohio voters signed petitions to put an amendment on the ballot in November that will lower drug prices for over 4 million Ohioans, including 164,000 children, save taxpayers $400 million annually, reduce healthcare costs for everyone and teach greedy drug companies and their CEOs a lesson.
You can learn more by visiting ohio4lowerdrugprices.com or following us on Facebook and Twitter.
For more information: Dennis Willard; 614.209.8945; dennis@precisionnewmedia.com
From: David P. Little
Subject: Drug Executive Behind $1000 Pill Now Enjoys New Nickname Billion Dollar Man
For Immediate Release
July 24, 2017
Drug Executive Behind $1000 Pill Now Enjoys New Nickname "Billion Dollar Man"
John Martin Has Made Millions Off the Backs of People Sick with Hepatitis C
COLUMBUS – Chairman of the Board of Directors and former CEO of Gilead Sciences John Martin enjoys the nickname "Billion Dollar Man" while his company sells a drug so expensive that even Medicaid can only afford to treat some of the patients.
Gilead sells Harvoni and Sovaldi, drugs that are used to treat Hepatitis C. However, a recent Senate report found that because of the high cost of the Gilead drugs, the Ohio Medicaid program only paid to treat a select few hepatitis C infected persons and that Ohio and 18 other states only paid for the Gilead drugs when patients reached stage 3 of liver disease. Stage 3 is when the patient exhibits signs of hardening of the liver (fibrosis). In stage 4 patients have full blown cirrhosis of the liver – a condition that can be lethal.
These drugs to treat hepatitis C can cost $94,500 in the United States, while in Egypt the cost for the same drugs is only $1,000.
"Americans deserve better. If the government can't even afford to pay for these drugs, how can regular people? It's disgusting how drug companies are able to get away with this price gouging at the expense of sick and suffering Ohioans," said Dennis Willard, Vote Yes on Issue 2 spokesperson. "Greedy drug company executives like Martin raise prices on life saving drugs just because they can to make more money for themselves and their shareholders. Voting yes on Issue 2 in November is the first step to telling greedy drug companies who want to raise prices, 'no you can't.'"
From 2009 – 2014 while CEO of Gilead, Martin was compensated over $400 million, becoming the industry's best-paid executive. By his retirement, he was worth more than $1 billion.
For more information: Dennis Willard; 614.209.8945; dennis@precisionnewmedia.com
No Russia collusion, Trump son-in-law Kushner tells Congress
MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press - Associated Press - Monday, July 24, 2017
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner denied Monday that he colluded with Russians in the course of President Donald Trump's White House bid and declared he has "nothing to hide."
Behind closed doors, Kushner spoke to staff members of the Senate intelligence committee for nearly three hours at the Capitol, then made a brief public statement back at the White House.
"Let me be very clear," he said. "I did not collude with Russia nor do I know of anyone else in the campaign who did so."
Kushner left without taking questions. In an 11-page statement, released hours before the Capitol session, he detailed four contacts with Russians during Trump's campaign and transition. It aimed to explain inconsistencies and omissions in a security clearance form that have invited public scrutiny.
In the statement, Kushner said that none of his contacts, which included meetings at Trump Tower with the Russian ambassador and a Russian lawyer, was improper.
Kushner arrived Monday morning at a Senate office building, exiting a black sport utility vehicle and greeting photographers with a grin and a wave. When he left, he responded to shouted questions, saying the interview went "great" and that he answered as many questions "as they had."
In speaking to Congress, Kushner — as both the president's son-in-law and a trusted senior adviser during the campaign and inside the White House — became the first member of the president's inner circle to face questions from congressional investigators as they probe Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign. He is to meet with lawmakers on the House intelligence committee Tuesday.
Kushner's appearances have been highly anticipated, in part because of headlines in recent months about his interactions with Russians and because he had not personally responded to questions about an incomplete security clearance form and his conversations with foreigners.
"I have shown today that I am willing to do so and will continue to cooperate as I have nothing to hide," he said in the statement.
The document provides for the first time Kushner's own recollection of a meeting at Trump Tower with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. to talk about secure lines of communications and, months earlier, of a gathering with a Russian lawyer who was said to have damaging information to provide about Hillary Clinton.
In the document, Kushner calls the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya such a "waste of time" that he asked his assistant to call him out of the gathering.
Emails released this month show that the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., accepted the meeting with the idea that he would receive information as part of a Russian government effort to help Trump's campaign. But Kushner says he hadn't seen those emails until recently shown them by his lawyers.
Kushner said in his statement that Trump Jr. invited him to the meeting. He says he arrived late and when he heard the lawyer discussing the issue of adoptions, he texted his assistant to call him out.
"No part of the meeting I attended included anything about the campaign, there was no follow up to the meeting that I am aware of, I do not recall how many people were there (or their names), and I have no knowledge of any documents being offered or accepted," he said.
Kushner also denied reports he discussed setting up a "secret back-channel" with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. But he did detail a conversation with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in December at Trump Tower in which retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then-incoming national security adviser, also attended.
During the meeting, Kushner said he and Kislyak talked about establishing a secure line for the countries to communicate about policy in Syria.
Kushner said that when Kislyak asked if there was a secure way for him to provide information on Syria from what Kislyak called his "generals," Kushner asked if there was an existing communications channel at the embassy that could be used to convey the information to Flynn.
"The Ambassador said that would not be possible and so we all agreed that we would receive this information after the Inauguration. Nothing else occurred," the statement said.
Kushner said he never proposed an ongoing secret form of communication.
Flynn attorney Robert Kelner declined comment when asked about Kushner's characterization of the meeting.
Kushner also said he met with a Russian banker, Sergey Gorkov, at the request of Kislyak but that no specific policies were discussed.
Kushner explained that his application form for a security clearance form was submitted prematurely due to a miscommunication with his assistant, who had erroneously believed the document was complete.
He said he mistakenly omitted all of his foreign contacts, not just his meetings with Russians, and has worked in the last six months with the FBI to correct the record.
In addition, Kushner described receiving a "random email" during the presidential campaign from someone claiming to have Trump's tax returns and demanding ransom to keep the information secret.
Unlike every other major presidential candidate over the last 40 years, Trump didn't release his tax returns during the campaign. Since taking office, he has continued to refuse.
Kushner said he interpreted the late October email as a hoax and that the email came from a person going by the name "Guccifer400." The name is an apparent reference to Guccifer 2.0, an anonymous hacker who has claimed responsibility for breaking into the Democratic National Committee's computer systems.
Kushner said the emailer demanded payment in Bitcoin, an online currency. Kushner says he showed the email to a Secret Service agent, who told him to ignore it.
Trump Jr. and Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was also at the June 2016 meeting, were scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. But on Friday their attorneys said they remained in negotiations with that panel. The two men are now in discussions to be privately interviewed by staff or lawmakers, though the GOP chairman of the committee, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, has said they will eventually testify in public.
The president took to Twitter on Monday to repeat his criticism of the investigations, and reiterate allegation against his former opponent and included a swipe at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was the subject of a scathing public rebuke by Trump in a New York Times interview last week. "So why aren't the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations?" the president tweeted.
___
Associated Press writers Chad Day, Eric Tucker and Kevin Freking contributed to this report.
___
This story has been corrected to correct Kushner's arrival time.
From: tbacane
Subject: Revoke Kushner's Security Clearance
Subject: Jared Kushner's national security clearance must be revoked immediately!
I signed a petition to The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate which says:
"Jared Kushner's previously undisclosed meetings with Russian officials may pose a danger to our country."
Will you sign this petition? Click here:
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/jared-kushners-national?mailing_id=38210&source=s.icn.em.cr&r_by=4472617
From: Daytonians Against War Now (DAWN) On Behalf Of Logan Martinez
Subject: [DAWN] What Does Russiagate Look Like to Russians?
What Does Russiagate Look Like to Russians?
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone on 21 July 17
Russia isn't as strong as we think, but they do have nukes – which is why beating the war drum is a mistake
Last Wednesday, former adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton Paul Begala stepped out of his usual milquetoast centrist costume and made a chest-thumping pronouncement on CNN.
"We were and are under attack by a hostile foreign power," he said. "We should be debating how many sanctions we should place on Russia, or whether we should blow up the KGB."
Begala's is the latest in a string of comments from prominent pols and pundits suggesting we are (or should be) in a state of war with nuclear-armed Russia.
Former DNC chair Donna Brazile tweeting this week, "The Communists are dictating the terms of the debate" – and not bothering to delete the error – is another weird example of what feels like intense longing in the Beltway to reignite the Cold War. (Begala wanting to blow up the long-dead KGB is another.)
James Clapper this spring saying Russians are "genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor" also recalled the Sovietology era, when Russians were cast as evil, emotionless manipulators, cold as their icy homeland. CNN reporter Michael Weiss casting suspicion on people with Russian spouses is another creepy recent example.
For journalists like me who have backgrounds either working or living in Russia, the new Red Scare has been an ongoing freakout. A lot of veteran Russia reporters who may have disagreed with each other over other issues in the past now find themselves in like-minded bewilderment over the increasingly aggressive rhetoric.
Many of us were early Putin critics who now find ourselves in the awkward position of having to try to argue Americans off the ledge, or at least off the path to war, when it comes to dealing with the Putin regime.
There's a lot of history that's being glossed over in the rush to restore Russia to an archenemy role.
For one, long before the DNC hack, we meddled in their elections. This was especially annoying to Russians because we were ostensibly teaching them the virtues of democracy at the time. We even made a Hollywood movie on the topic (Spinning Boris, starring Jeff Goldblum and Anthony LaPaglia!).
After Boris Yeltsin won re-election in 1996, Time magazine ran a gloating cover story – YANKS TO THE RESCUE! – about three American advisers sent to help the pickling autocrat Yeltsin devise campaign strategy. Picture Putin sending envoys to work out of the White House to help coordinate Trump's re-election campaign, and you can imagine how this played in Russia.
Former Yeltsin administration chief Sergei Filatov denied that the three advisers did anything of value for Yeltsin. But even if Filatov is right, American interference throughout the Nineties was extensive.
For one thing, the privatization effort under Yeltsin, much of which was coordinated by Americans, helped lead to a little-understood devil's bargain that sealed Yeltsin's electoral victory.
Essentially, Yeltsin agreed to privatize the jewels of Russian industry into the hands of a few insiders – we call them oligarchs now – in return for their overwhelming financial and media support in the '96 race against surging communist Gennady Zyuganov. The likes of Vladimir Potanin, Boris Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky were gifted huge fortunes before bankrolling Yeltsin's re-election bid.
How much of a hand we had in that infamous trade has never been explained. But Americans surely helped usher in the oligarch era by guiding Russia through its warped privatization process. In some expat circles back then, you found Americans who believed that by creating a cadre of super-wealthy Russians, we would create a social class that would be pre-motivated to beat back a communist revival.
This may have prevented a backslide into communism, but a by-product was accelerating a descent into gangsterism and oligarchy.
The West also aided Yeltsin during that election season by providing a $10.2 billion IMF loan that just happened to almost exactly match the cost of Yeltsin's vicious and idiotic invasion of Chechnya. (Yeltsin had been under fire for the cash crunch caused by the war.) Le Monde called the timely giganto-loan "an implicit vote in favor of candidate Yeltsin."
What most Americans don't understand is that the Putin regime at least in part was a reaction to exactly this kind of Western meddling.
The Yeltsin regime, which incidentally also saw wide-scale assassinations of journalists and other human rights abuses, was widely understood to be a pseudo-puppet state, beholden to the West.
The conceit of the Putin regime, on the other hand, was that while Putin was a gangster, he was at least the Russians' own gangster.
It's debatable how much success Putin really had at arresting the flight of Russian capital abroad that began in the Yeltsin years. But the legend that he would at least try to keep Russia's wealth in Russia was a key reason for his initial popularity.
Russians also have an opposite take on their "aggression" in Ukraine and Crimea, one that is colored by a history few in America know or understand.
When asked about the roots of the current Russian-American divide, former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, the author of excellent books like Whistleblower in the CIA and Failure of Intelligence, points to a 1990 deal struck between Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze.
The two men brokered a quid pro quo: The Soviets wouldn't oppose a re-united Germany, if the Americans promised not to "leapfrog" East Germany into the Russians' former sphere of influence.
Goodman later interviewed both men, who confirmed the key details. "They both used the word 'leapfrog,'" he says. "The Russians think we broke that deal."
Russia believes the U.S. reneged on the "leapfrog" deal by seeking to add the Baltics, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Georgia and even Ukraine to the NATO alliance.
To Russia, American denunciations of Russian adventurism in Crimea and eastern Ukraine seem absurd, when all they see is NATO leapfrogging its way ever-closer to their borders.
This is not to say that the Russians were right to move into Crimea or Eastern Ukraine. But it's easy to see why Russians would be frosty about America trying to put border states under the umbrella of NATO, or wigged out by Americans conducting war games in places like Latvia. Imagine, for instance, the response here in the States if the Russians conducted amphibious military exercises in the Baja Peninsula after promising to honor the Monroe doctrine.
As Goodman and others have pointed out, failing to predict the Soviet collapse was probably the biggest intelligence failure in our history. While Ronald Reagan and his cronies politicized intelligence and overhyped the Soviets as a mighty and monolithic force, the on-the-ground reality was that the Soviet Union was a crumbling third-world state besotted with crippling economic and infrastructural problems.
We missed countless opportunities for easier, safer and cheaper relations with the Russians by consistently mistaking their disintegrating Potemkin Empire for an ascendant threat.
It's not exactly the same story now, but it's close. Putin's Russia certainly has global ambitions, just as the Soviets did. But the game now is much more about connections and hot money than about geopolitics or territory. There's evidence that the Russians have tried to burrow their way into America's commercial and political establishment, but by most accounts the main route of entry has been financial.
If indeed Trump was a target of Russian efforts, we'll likely discover that this was not something that was exclusive to Trump but rather just one data point amid a broad, holistic strategy to curry favor and make connections across the American political class.
Still, these efforts are probably far more limited in scope than we've been led to imagine. DNC hack or no DNC hack, Russia is still a comparatively weak country with limited power to influence a nation like the U.S., especially since it's still dogged internally by those same massive economic and infrastructural problems it's always had. Putin's political grip on power at home is also far less sure than our pundits and politicians are letting on.
The generalized plan to create chaos in other industrialized states by seeding/spreading corruption and political confusion – which many in the intelligence community believe is an aim of Russian intelligence efforts – is revealing in itself. It's the strategy of a weak and unstable third-world state looking for a cheap way to stay in the game (and bolster its profile) versus more powerful industrial rivals. Hyping Russia as an all-powerful menace actually plays into this strategy.
But the Russians still have nukes, which is why we have to be very careful about letting rhetoric get too hot, especially with the president we now have.
For all the fears about Trump being a Manchurian Candidate bent on destroying America from within, the far more likely nightmare endgame involves our political establishment egging the moron Trump into a shooting war as a means of proving his not-puppetness.
This already almost happened once, when Trump fired missiles into Syria with Russian troops on the ground, seemingly as a means of derailing a Russiagate furor that was really spiraling that particular week. That episode proved that the absolute worst time to bang the war drum under Trump is when he's feeling vulnerable on Russia – which he clearly is now.
Rising anti-Russian hysteria and a nuclear button-holder in the White House who acts before he thinks is a very bad combination. We should try to chill while we still can, especially since the Russians, once again, probably aren't as powerful as we think.
From: Facebook
Subject: See Dalma Grandjean's new post in your group Brainstorming for a Blue Ohio
Dalma Grandjean created a post in your group Brainstorming for a Blue Ohio
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Dalma Grandjean shared a link
July 21 at 1:50pm
Anyone placing bets on how long before Trump fires Mueller? Are we prepared to mount an unprecedented firestorm of protest, demand for appointment of independent prosecutor, and initiation of impeachment proceedings?
Exclusive: Mueller asks WH staff to preserve all documents relating to June 2016 meeting
Special counsel Robert Mueller has asked the White House to preserve all documents relating to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that Donald Trump…
cnn.com
From: Murshed Zaheed; Political Director, CREDO Action from Working Assets
Subject: Sign the petition: Don't let Trump Republicans gut Wall Street reform
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Petition to Senate Democrats:
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Seven years ago this month, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act became law. But now, Republicans are planning to gut it beyond all recognition.
References:
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End of MPEN e-Newsletter
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