Sinema has been pushing the industry’s interests at the local level in Chandler, Arizona, where she’s tried to bully city officials into approving her client’s AI data center. Using a public records request, Zeteo’s Akshay Gokul obtained documents showing that Sinema has been quietly lobbying politicians in Chandler for months, attempting to sell them on “our AI data center project.”

The former senator has separately launched an AI-industry front group in Washington, DC, called the AI Infrastructure Coalition, where she’s now representing corporate giants like Google, Meta (Facebook’s parent company), Microsoft, and ExxonMobil; the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz; and utility firms PG&E, Next Era, and Pinnacle West.

In this must-watch video,Zeteo’s Frank Cappelloreviews Sinema’s lobbying for the AI industry, sharing the mobster-style pitch she made to officials in Chandler, and his own hope that she manages to “cash out before the AI bubble completely bursts.” We’d hate to see her lose the bag.

===

illegal to lobby so she is advisor see maj rept

start own bs org

zet paywall

months after giving up her Senate seat in Arizona, Democrats’ former corporate villain Kyrsten Sinema went to a local meeting to bully the city’s commissioners into approving an artificial-intelligence data center.

Citing her work “hand in glove with the Trump administration” on AI, Sinema argued that the planning commission in Chandler, Arizona, might as well go ahead and greenlight her client’s proposed data center – because soon, once Donald Trump enacts a national AI policy, the city will have no say in such matters.

“If we choose not to move forward with this development, the land will continue to sit vacant – until federal preemption occurs,” she warned commissioners. “The AI action plan set out by the Trump administration says very clearly that we must continue to proliferate AI and AI data centers throughout the country. So federal preemption is coming. Chandler right now has the opportunity to determine how and when these new, innovative AI data centers will be built. When federal preemption comes, we’ll no longer have that privilege. They will just occur, and they will occur in the manner in which they want to occur.”

Sinema’s comments to the Chandler planning commission were recorded on video and posted online, giving Americans an unusually candid look at one senator’s lucrative trip through Washington’s proverbial “revolving door.”...

lever

...Kott is hardly the only recent example of a corporate Democratic aide who traded in public service for an influence industry gig. For instance, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-Ariz.) former communications director John LaBombard left her office to become senior vice president at ROKK Solutions earlier this year — moving from an office allied with the drug industry to a public relations firm that has worked for Big Pharma....

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rs 9/25?

CNN’s Jake Tapper invited former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on his show last week to, as he put it, “discuss how she’s working with the Trump administration to advance some particular causes about which she is passionate.”

Put another way, CNN had on Sinema to talk about issues of relevance to her lobbying firm’s clients and her other business endeavors, as she races toward making “well over a million dollars this year,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

The network did not disclose her work in Washington’s influence-peddling industry, even as she was asked to talk about artificial intelligence and its potential role in health care. It was a puzzling decision, given that when Sinema joined the lobbying firm Hogan Lovells, she said in a video that she was “excited to start working with companies that I’ve long known in the areas of AI.” The firm, in announcing her hiring, touted Sinema’s “extensive experience in AI.”

It’s fairly standard for former lawmakers to take a trip through Washington’s proverbial “revolving door” once they’re done with their time in office and enter the influence industry — especially former lawmakers with Sinema’s profile. Corporate America tends to reward conservative and moderate Democrats who undermine efforts by their party’s president to enact progressive policies, as Sinema did. (Sinema joined Congress as a Democrat before leaving the party to become an independent, but continued to caucus with Senate Democrats.)

These former lawmakers appear with some frequency on TV and in newspapers, and cable news networks rarely, if ever, note what those lawmakers are now doing with their time for compensation. Sinema’s CNN appearance was unusual, though, in that the cable network gave Sinema a relatively blank slate in primetime to discuss issues she is actively working on now as a consultant.

The American public has no way of knowing who exactly Sinema’s clients are. The former one-term senator, who decided last year to retire from Congress rather than lose her race to a Democrat, is not technically a lobbyist, yet; under federal ethics rules, she is barred from registering to lobby Congress for two years. As such, her clients have not been disclosed.

Tapper did note that Sinema is “invested in” the topic of artificial intelligence and had “launched the Spark Center with Arizona State University.”

That’s probably a story worth a bit more exploration: Shortly after she left office, Sinema donated $3 million from her federal campaign account to the Arizona State University Foundation to launch the Spark Center for Innovation in Learning. Sinema told Tapper she’s partnering on this work with OpenAI, the company behind the chatbot ChatGPT.

“We’re partnering with OpenAI, and we’re going to do a competition, and then financially and with mentorship help these companies actually get to the market,” Sinema said, adding: “Maybe there’ll be an app that helps dyslexic students take in information differently than in a traditional classroom.”

At one point, Tapper asked Sinema: “What do you make of President Trump’s posture on AI and what are you guys doing over there?”

She replied, “You know, there are folks who have lots of various opinions about the Trump administration. But I got to say, on AI, they are knocking it out of the park. David Sacks, who was appointed as the AI and crypto czar, knows the stuff inside and out.” (Sinema has said she’s working with clients in the cryptocurrency industry, too.)

Sinema went on to praise the Trump administration’s “AI Action Plan.”

“It is well-reasoned. It is well-thought. It is ambitious,” she said. “I mean, it really strikes a path for us to win the AI race against China, which I think is of national security importance, but also kind of an existential threat that we face as a country.”

Noting that he “was talking to a doctor just earlier today,” Tapper asked Sinema about “the ability to use AI to come up with medicines.”

Sinema, whose firm represents a group called the AI Healthcare Coalition, said, “Yes, that’s actually already happening. I’m actually working with a company that uses AI to identify gaps in the pharmaceutical industry and look for orphan drugs that have been left behind, or diseases where we could use existing drugs to apply to other diseases. I mean, the potential of AI to transform all of our lives is incredible.”

Kyrsten Sinema, a traitor to the cause of women's rights, loses support of feminists

Amanda Marcotte Salon

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Kyrsten Sinema’s bizarre spending indicates possible retirement from Senate: 'It’s just nuts' - Alternet.org

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Kyrsten Sinema’s private flights are costing a fortune - Alternet.org---

an 12 23

earlier this year, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona) voted with Senate Republicans for legislation to kill President Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness proposal. In the months following that vote, she was a major recipient of the student loan industry's largesse.

The bill itself, H.J. Res 45, would have blocked Biden's plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower, though the president promised to veto it if it reached his desk, and the Supreme Court ultimately struck down the proposal at the end of its 2023 session. The bill narrowly passed the Senatein June, with 52 votes in favor and 46 in opposition. Sinema joined forces with all Senate Republicans to give the bill the narrow majority it needed for passage. Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) and Jon Tester (D-Montana) also voted with the GOP to pass the measure.

According to the Phoenix New Times, Sinema proceeded to rake in thousands of dollars in contributions from various donors connected to student loan servicers, for-profit colleges, banks and debt collectors after her vote.

The New Times combed through Sinema's campaign finance disclosure forms on the Federal Election Commission database and learned that the Arizona senator received approximately $27,000 in PAC donations between June and September of 2023. That includes a $5,000 contribution from NelNet PAC, which is a political action committee representing the interests of the second-largest provider of federally backed loans given by private lenders. Sinema also received $5,000 from a PAC connected to private lender Sallie Mae and $5,000 from a PAC run by the board chair of a for-profit Arizona college.

Smaller donations from the industry during that time period include a $2,500 donation from debt collector Portfolio Recovery Associates, $2,500 from a Washington, DC-based trade association representing the interests of for-profit colleges, and a combined $7,000 in donations from three PACs run by banks.

Despite her fundraising activity, Arizona's senior US senator has not yet indicated if she plans to run for reelection in 2024. She currently faces opposition from Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) and failed 2022 Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who campaigned as a vociferous supporter of former President Donald Trump.

:{Current polls show a virtual dead heat between the three candidates, with Gallego having a slight edge over his two opponents. :{Gallego brought in more than $3 million in donationsduring the third quarter of 2023, with an average donation amount of $28}:

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Kyrsten Sinema’s funds 'dry up' as Democratic donors abandon her: report - Alternet.org

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'I don’t care': Kyrsten Sinema plans to cash in

on Senate infamy if she loses reelection in 2024 - Alternet.org

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'I don’t care': Kyrsten Sinema plans to cash in on Senate infamy if she loses reelection in 2024 - Alternet.org

Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona), who has been a thorn in the side of both President Biden and the Senate Democratic Caucus, is already eyeing a potentially lucrative private sector career if her bid to stay in the US Senate is unsuccessful.

In Atlantic staff writer's new biography of outgoing Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Sinema — an independent who caucuses with Democrats (she left the Democratic Party in 2022) — apparently confided to the 2012 Republican presidential nominee that she's apathetic about staying in Washington for another six-year term. Arizona's senior US senator added that she feels she unilaterally "saved" the upper chamber of Congress by bucking' Democrats' efforts to eliminate the filibuster.

"I don’t care. I can go on any board I want to. I can be a college president. I can do anything,” she told Romney. “I saved the Senate filibuster by myself. I saved the Senate by myself. That’s good enough for me."

As the New Republic noted, the filibuster isn't actually a tradition in the Senate, nor is it even mentioned in the US Constitution. Former President Barack Obama once called it a "Jim Crow relic." Sinema's colleague, Senator Angus King (I-Maine), has called for it to be reformed by requiring those who use it to actually hold the Senate floor in what's known as a "talking filibuster."

"[I]nstead of having to have 60 votes to pass something, you'd have to have 41 votes to stop it. That way, the minority would at least have to show up," Sen. King said of the filibuster in 2021, when it was used to stop voting rights legislation. "So we've got to do something about this, at least when it comes to something as crucial as democracy itself, as voting rights."

The New Republic's Jason Linkins wrote last weekend that Sinema's obstinance in getting rid of the filibuster has led to Democrats being unable to pass significant legislative reforms — not only in the arena of voting rights, but in an assortment of other social programs included in President Biden's Build Back Better Act that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Sinema ultimately watered down and killed. Sinema was also a key opposition vote in Democrats' unsuccessful attempt to keep the expanded child tax credit.

"Her steadfast opposition to taxing corporations and the wealthy cut off the one funding mechanism that Manchin was willing to countenance to keep it running," Linkins wrote.

Sinema is currently running as an independent in the 2024 US Senate race against both presumptive Republican nominee Kari Lake and presumptive Democratic nominee Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona). An early October poll showed Lake in front, with 37% of respondents saying they would vote for her next November. Gallego was second, with 33%, while Sinema came in third with just 19% support.

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10 23

'A loser and a spoiler': Kyrsten Sinema raises almost $200K from major GOP donors - Alternet.org

Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona), who has not yet announced if she's running for reelection in 2024, is cleaning up in campaign contributions from well-heeled Republican donors.

The Messenger reported that Sen. Sinema — an independent who caucuses with Democrats — has raised roughly $10.8 million since first being elected to the US Senate in 2018. However, a significant chunk of her fundraising in the third quarter (from July through October) has come increasingly from far-right billionaires known for giving to Republican causes.

:{:{According to campaign finance records from the Federal Election Commission database, of the approximately $826,000 raised last quarter, $197,400 came from Republican donors. Some of the more prominent Sinema donors include business magnate Harlan Crow, who gave the Arizona senator the maximum allowable amount of $6,600 for the 2024 election cycle, $1,200 of which came in the third quarter.}:

In addition to making the news for his patronage of Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas and his family, Crow is also a top contributor to the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) -- a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky). The SLF is the GOP's primary vehicle for running attack ads against Senate Democrats, and even spent roughly $17 million attacking Sinema in the 2018 cycle. Crow has so far donated $725,000 to the SLF, and likewise contributed $500,000 to its House counterpart, the Congressional Leadership Fund, in 2018.}:

POLL:Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

Sinema has also received the maximum $6,600 contribution from TCW Group chairman Marc Stern, who has donated $800,000 to the SLF over the past six years and another $300,000 to the Republican National Committee. Meanwhile, the Sinema Leadership Fund -- another one of the senator's fundraising arms -- received a $3,700 check from Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. The Goldman boss has so far spent $73,000 bolstering House Republicans, and given the maximum donation to Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) in his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Sacha Haworth, who is a senior advisor to the anti-Sinema group Replace Sinema, said the embattled Arizona senator is relying more on GOP support given her waning support among Democrats.

"What with every poll showing Sinema to be a loser and a spoiler in the Arizona Senate race, it’s clear her pool of donors is shrinking, and all that’s left are the same Republicans who fund extreme attack ads against her former Democratic colleagues and Leader Schumer,” Haworth told The Messenger.

Sen. Sinema has been a thorn in the side of the Biden administration for several years, helping Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) torpedo Biden's Build Back Better Act in the Senate. Had it passed, the legislation would have greenlit funding for universal pre-K education, a guaranteed four-week paid family medical leave package for all Americans, and guaranteed child care subsidies for parents, among other provisions. While Sinema was initially elected as a Democrat, she has since changed her party affiliation to Independent. Roughly a month later, Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) announced his campaign against Sinema. Gallego has since outraised Sinema in consecutive quarters.

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small donors flee

https://www.alternet.org/kyrsten-sinema-and-joe-manchin/

amanda

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/kyrsten-sinema-feminists

video

https://www.alternet.org/kyrsten-sinema-2659970291/

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https://www.alternet.org/kyrsten-sinema-2659457754/

tulsi sis sec $

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ethics comm staff use

https://www.alternet.org/abuse-of-taxpayer-dollars-complaint/

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https://www.alternet.org/manchin-sinema-2659280053/

sinema and Manchin literally 'high-fived' at Davos to show their support for keeping the Senate filibuster

Alex Henderson

Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have earned a reputation for being the two Democratic U.S. senators — or in Sinema’s case, a formerly Democratic U.S. senator — who are the mos...

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judd Davos 1 23

...tuesday's WEF program included a panel with Senators Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). The pair shared an on-stage high-five in celebration of the filibuster, which has been used to block increases in the minimum wage, protections for voting rights, and efforts to maintain access to reproductive health care. ...

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hmmn BBB? edit bd sellout = compromise?

https://www.alternet.org/kyrsten-sinema-doesnt-get-credit/

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https://www.alternet.org/kyrsten-sinema-2658947101/

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well, guess we don't need to be embarrassed anymore

12 22

The Democrats just lost one seat in their newly minted 51-49 majority in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced in an Arizona Republic column that she is leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent.

"Arizonans – including many registered as Democrats or Republicans – are eager for leaders who focus on common-sense solutions rather than party doctrine," Sinema wrote. "But if the loudest, most extreme voices continue to drive each party toward the fringes – and if party leaders stay more focused on energizing their bases than delivering for all Americans – these kinds of lasting legislative successes will become rarer."

Sinema insisted that Americans were more united than increasingly polarized political parties would have them believe, and she said that becoming an independent would allow her to better represent Arizona voters.

"Americans are told that we have only two choices – Democrat or Republican – and that we must subscribe wholesale to policy views the parties hold, views that have been pulled further and further toward the extremes," she wrote. "Most Arizonans believe this is a false choice, and when I ran for the U.S. House and the Senate, I promised Arizonans something different. and work with anyone to achieve lasting results. I committed I would not demonize people I disagreed with, engage in name-calling, or get distracted by political drama."

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On Friday, December 9, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has made a bombshell announcement: She is leaving the Democratic Party and will be registered as an independent going forward. This announcement comes only a few days after Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia was reelected in a runoff and Democrats were celebrating the 51-seat majority they expected to have; Sinema was part of that 51, but she will no longer be a Democrat.

In an interview with Politico, however, Sinema said that she won’t be caucusing with Senate Republicans. The centrist senator wouldn’t say whether or not she will seek reelection in 2024.

Sinema told Politico, “Nothing will change about my values or my behavior…. I don’t anticipate that anything will change about the Senate structure…. I intend to show up to work, do the same work that I always do. I just intend to show up to work as an independent.”

Politico’s Burgess Everett observes, “Even before her party switch, she faced rumblings of a primary challenge in 2024 from Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). Becoming an independent will avoid a head-to-head primary against Gallego or another progressive, should she seek reelection. A theoretical general-election campaign could be chaotic if both Democrats and Republicans field candidates against her.”

Sinema’s decision is receiving plenty of reactions on social media. Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, in a December 9 post on Twitter, speculated that leaving the Democratic Party was her way of avoiding a primary challenge from Gallego.

Kondik tweeted, “My initial gut reaction to this is that she figured she would lose the primary so is trying this path to reelection instead.”

Twitter user Brett Bobysud, @BBobysud588, posted, “Basically daring Gallego to run because she knows they'd likely split the D vote in the general election and give the seat to Rs. After Kelly won this past year in this environment, she probably figured this was her only option to keep her seat.”

Health writer Gina Shaw tweeted that Sinema is “holding the seat hostage.”

NBC News’ Sahil Kapur, @sahilkapur, posted, “This completes a remarkable transformation for Kyrsten Sinema, from Green Party activist to Democrat to centrist independent.”

Twitter user @PurveyorOCreepy, in response to Kapur’s tweet, posted, “This completes a remarkable transformation for Kyrsten Sinema, from collecting dark money to collecting dark money to collecting dark money.”

Mary Buggie-Hunt, @MaryBuggieHunt, was critical of Sinema as well, describing her as “a show-boating, attention-seeker who wants desperately to remain relevant AND in the news.”

Twitter user Akaash Kolluri, @akaashkolluri, commented, “I wonder how well it will work. It’s one thing for someone like King or Sanders to remain independent after a career of that, but this is so clearly a career-saving exercise that I wonder how many people it convinces. It’s not like Sinema has Lieberman or Murkowski's tenure either.”

Cassandra Noel, @CNDCapeCod, said of Sinema, “She was never a democrat to begin with. Can’t think of any democratic policies she even supports. A shame, considering her constituents thought they were voting for a democrat and she feels zero loyalty to them.”

Semafor’s Dave Weigel tweeted, “I woke up on the west coast so was initially confused by some bad analysis that pretended this risked the balance of power. It doesn't - it's a gordian knot-cutting political tactic that nullifies the biggest threat to Sinema's reelection, a primary against Phoenix's congressman.”

Weigel also posted, “We don't know how Dems play this yet. In states where popular (more so than Sinema) independents run and caucus with Dems, the DSCC stands down - Maine, Vermont. They don't have to run a D and won't want to if it looks like they'd only be a spoiler.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/she-did-nothing-ruben-gallego-blasts-kyrsten-sinema-for-not-helping-fellow-democrats-in-the-midterms/

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an 8 22

sinema gets carried interest loophole reform jettisoned;

https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/one-senator-wealthy-essentially-unaffected/

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https://www.exposedbycmd.org**/2022/08**/15/kyrsten-sinema-has-many-friends-in-private-equity/

alex k

Last week, Democrats in the Senate and House managed to pass the Inflation Reduction Act—a significant tax, climate, and health care package—but only after appeasing one senator from Arizona by allowing an ongoing tax loophole for investment executives.

For years, lawmakers have attempted to close the carried interest loophole, an income tax arrangement that favors investment managers at private equity, hedge fund, and venture capital firms by allowing them to pay lower taxes—at a rate based on capital gains as opposed to their actual income from labor.

Once Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) worked out a deal with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—who has repeatedly obstructed Biden’s agenda—it briefly looked like Democrats might succeed in ending the special tax treatment.

But with the need for all 50 Democratic senators to sign on in order for the bill to pass, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) wasn’t about to concede her power. Although the state she represents isn’t home to many private equity firms, she has become the Senate’s leading defender of the industry. This staunch support has puzzled some observers, including The New York Times, which acknowledges the campaign contribution connection but questions why the senator doesn’t explicitly explain her support of the carried interest loophole.

A Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) review of federal campaign finance records shows that since the 2018 election cycle, many executives and lobbyists from the nation’s top private equity firms have showered Sinema’s campaign with cash, while also funding industry PACs that donated to her campaign. Many industry donors hail from California, Massachusetts, New York, and Texas, but few, if any, live in Arizona.

Corporate PACs have helped out, too, but these can only give a maximum of $5,000 per election. Together, the many managers who run these firms can give far more—up to $2,900 per election, or $5,800 for the primary and general elections in a given cycle.

With access guaranteed by their contributions, many members of the investment management industry had “numerous in-person meetings” with Sinema and her staff in the weeks leading up to the vote, according to CNBC.

From C-Suite to Sinema

Since running for Senate in 2018, Sinema has raked in nearly $2.5 million from individuals and PACs in the securities and investment industry, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) data analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics. And 86% of that support came from individual executives in the industry.

A member of the Senate Banking Committee and its securities, insurance, and investment subcommittee, Sinema has courted private equity titans and received the maximum allowed amount from the PACs of leading private equity firms such as The Carlyle Group, along with the industry’s trade organization, the American Investment Council (AIC). Even though she is not up for reelection until 2024, her campaign has already taken in $63,000 from securities and investment PACs since last year.

Still, the bulk of Sinema’s industry funds comes from executives—the very people who would have been forced to give up their lucrative loophole and pay taxes at a higher rate if she hadn’t blocked the carried interest reform proposal. Among her donors in the 2021–22 election cycle are the following executives from some of the world’s largest private equity firms:

KKR

Henry R. Kravis, the billionaire cofounder and co-executive chairman of the world’s largest private equity firm ($5,800, the maximum amount of $2,900 for both the primary and general elections). An avid Trump supporter and Republican megadonor, he gave $1 million to the ex-president’s inauguration fund.
George R. Roberts, Kravis’ cousin and the billionaire cofounder and co-executive chairman of KKR ($5,800 to Sinema’s campaign and another $5,000 to her leadership PAC, Getting Stuff Done)
Joseph Bae, co-CEO of KKR ($5,800)
Robert Lewin, a partner and CFO of KKR who appears to have made his first and only federal campaign donations to Sinema last year ($5,800)
Ken Mehlman, a partner and global head of public affairs at KKR and a former member of the George W. Bush administration ($5,800)

The Carlyle Group

Peter J. Clare, a director and chief investment officer of corporate private equity at The Carlyle Group, the sixth-largest private equity firm in the world ($5,800 to the Sinema campaign and $4,200 to her leadership PAC)
Brian Bernasek, a managing director at Carlyle ($5,000)
Sandra Horbach, a partner and co-head of U.S. buyout and growth at Carlyle ($5,800 to the Sinema campaign and $4,200 to her leadership PAC)

Blackstone

Jon Gray, president and COO of Blackstone, the second-largest private equity firm in the U.S. ($10,000 to Sinema’s leadership PAC)
Sean Klimczak, a senior managing director and the global head of infrastructure at Blackstone, as well as a board member of the natural gas giant Cheniere Energy who led Blackstone’s investment in the company ($5,800)
Eli Nagler, a senior managing director of private equity at Blackstone ($2,800)
Alex Katz, managing director of government relations at Blackstone, a former senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Schumer, and a member of the 2019–20 Biden for President National Finance Committee ($1,000 to the campaign and $500 to the leadership PAC)
Giovanni Cutaia, global head of real estate asset management at Blackstone ($2,900)

CVC, General Atlantic, Bain, and More

Christopher Stadler, a managing partner at CVC Capital Partners, the world’s fourth-largest private equity firm, who leads the company’s private equity investments in North America ($5,800)
Bill Ford, CEO of General Atlantic, the seventh-largest private equity firm in the world ($5,800)
Heather Berger, a senior partner at Apollo Global Management ($5,800)
Josh Bekenstein, co-chair of Bain Capital ($2,800)
John Connaughton, global head of Bain Capital Private Equity, co-managing partner of Bain Capital, and a GOP megadonor ($5,800)
David Belluck, a general partner of Riverside Partners ($5,800); three of his relatives who live at the same address each gave $5,800 as well
[doc]

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p 1 of 6

Table with 4 columns and 86 rows. Currently displaying rows 1 to 15.

DONOR EMPLOYER OCCUPATION AMOUNT

AMERICAN INVESTMENT COUNCIL PAC $5,000

APOLLO EDUCATION GROUP PAC $1,000

ARONSON, JEFF CENTERBRIDGE PARTNERS INVESTMENTS $5,800

BACON, LOUIS MOORE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT CHAIRMAN $5,800

BAE, JOSEPH KKR BUSINESSMAN $5,800

BARLE, STANKO RENAISSANCE TECHNOLOGIES LLC FINANCE RESEARCHER $600

BARTH, CARIN LB CAPITAL INC. PRIVATE EQUITY $1,000

BEHBAHANI, ALI NEW ENTERPRISE ASSOCIATES VENTURE CAPITAL $1,000

BEKENSTEIN, JOSHUA BAIN CAPITAL INVESTOR $2,800

BELLUCK, AARON N/A NOT EMPLOYED $5,800

BELLUCK, ALEXANDRA N/A NOT EMPLOYED $5,800

BELLUCK, DAVID RIVERSIDE PARTNERS PRIVATE EQUITY $5,800

BELLUCK, ZOE N/A NOT EMPLOYED $5,800

BERGER, HEATHER APOLLO MANAGEMENT FINANCE $5,800

BERNASEK, BRIAN THE CARLYLE GROUP FINANCE $5,000

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DONOR EMPLOYER OCCUPATION AMOUNT

ALSIKAFI, ZAID MADISON DEARBORN PARTNERS MANAGING DIRECTOR $2,000

AMERICAN INVESTMENT COUNCIL $9,707

BAE, JOSEPH KKR CO-PRESIDENT & CO-COO $5,000

BAILEY, BRADLEY AMERICAN INVESTMENT COUNCIL VICE PRESIDENT, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS $2,500

BARATTA, JOE BLACKSTONE GROUP GLOBAL HEAD OF PRIVATE EQUITY $5,000

BARBER, JEFFREY TA ASSOCIATES, INC. MANAGING DIRECTOR $1,500

BARLOW, JARED KLINE HILL PARTNERS LP MANAGING MEMBER $10,000

BARRETT, BRENDAN MADISON DEARBORN PARTNERS VICE PRESIDENT $750

BECKER, MARC APOLLO GLOBAL MANAGEMENT SENIOR PARTNER $5,000

BEGO, MICHAEL KLINE HILL PARTNERS LP MANAGING DIRECTOR $10,000

BERENSON, BRADFORD TPG PARTNER AND GENERAL COUNSEL $2,000

BERK, MICHAEL TA ASSOCIATES, INC. MANAGING DIRECTOR $2,000

BETTEN, ELIZABETH MADISON DEARBORN PARTNERS MANAGING DIRECTOR $1,500

BORO, SETH THOMA BRAVO MANAGING PARTNER $5,000

BRAVO, ORLANDO THOMA BRAVO MANAGING PARTNER $5,000

sinema is not the only U.S. senator to reap rewards from private equity firms; Schumer, for example, has received even more from the securities and investment industry since 2017. But he represents New York City, where many firms are headquartered, and as the senate majority leader, holds a position of influence that naturally attracts significant campaign contributions.

Private Equity Lobbyists Join In

Lobbyists representing the top private equity firms have also given large amounts to Sinema's campaign.

Subject Matter partner and cofounder Steve Elmendorf, who lobbied Congress directly on carried interest for both Blackstone and the AIC, gave Sinema $2,900, including $1,000 last August just as Democrats were attempting to negotiate passage of the since-failed Build Back Better package. As if in direct response, Sinema opposed closing the carried interest loophole in that proposed legislation, too. Elmendorf’s colleague Barry LaSala, who also lobbied on the same issue, donated $1,000 to Sinema in April.

Langston Emerson of Cypress Advocacy, who lobbied Congress on carried interest on behalf of the AIC, gave the Sinema campaign $4,500 in 2021.

In addition to in-person lobbying, Sinema was faced with public pressure from her allies. Last year the U.S. Chamber of Commerce gave the senator an award after she blocked a $15 minimum wage provision in the American Rescue Plan. This year the Arizona Chamber bought ads in local newspapers slamming the Inflation Reduction Act as a job and infrastructure killer and urging readers to call their senators to tell them to oppose the bill. The year before, the AIC ran its own ads and op-eds targeting Sinema and other senators.

Multiple Handouts to Private Equity

The failed carried interest provision would have effectively prevented investment managers from treating their own compensation as investment income, forcing them to pay a 37% marginal tax on their actual income as opposed to the much lower 20% long-term capital gains tax the loophole allows.

The 2017 Republican tax cut bill required finance executives to hold an investment for at least three years—as opposed to the previous one-year requirement—before realizing the gains at the lower tax rate. Democrats had wanted to extend the holding period to five years this time around, knowing that most firms would not hold an investment for that long before cashing out.

The private equity lobby—and Sinema—have consistently cast the tax loophole as essential for promoting local investments. Since private equity firms invest heavily in small businesses, the argument goes, imposing higher income taxes on managers would disincentivize them from making future investments. The AIC made this claim on Twitter, but it’s a fallacy: a tax on a manager's earnings from the firm's investments is not a tax on “the private capital that is helping local employers survive and grow.” It is simply an income tax on hedge-fund managers and other wealthy finance executives, meaning that it’s about their own money and personal bottom line, not the funds available to the firm for investments. [twt]

In the final stages of negotiating passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Sinema and six other Democrats joined Republicans to give the private equity industry yet another gift—one with an estimated value of $35 billion. The amendment they passed creates a special carveout that allows large private equity firms "to avoid tallying the earnings of their subsidiaries and portfolio companies when calculating whether or not they are subject to the new 15 percent corporate minimum tax," according to* The Lever*.

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/08/kyrsten-sinema/

Senate Democrats passed a pared-backed reconciliation package on Sunday, but only after a pair of widely supported provisions that would have made it harder for Wall Street tycoons to reduce their tax bills were removed at the behest of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema—the right-wing Arizona Democrat who has taken more than $500,000 in campaign contributions from private equity executives during the current election cycle.

"Remember the days when taking half a million bucks from an industry, and then passing legislation that only benefits that industry, while passing the costs onto everyone else, would be called corruption?" Brown University political economist Mark Blyth asked on social media. "Today it's just lobbying as usual."

:{:{}:

Last week, Sinema agreed to back the Inflation Reduction Act as long as the so-called "carried interest loophole," which benefits hedge fund managers and private equity moguls by allowing their investment income to be taxed at the long-term capital gains rate of around 20% rather than the ordinary top income rate of 37%, was preserved.

Democrats, who needed Sinema's support to pass the filibuster-proof bill through the evenly split Senate, obliged, forgoing a modest reform that would have raised an estimated $14 billion in federal revenue over a decade by increasing the holding period for investments to qualify for preferential tax treatment from three to five years.

As the Financial Times noted Monday, the Arizona Democrat "is a beneficiary of significant contributions from the private equity industry—whose lobbying machine and political influence have grown increasingly powerful over the past two decades."

Citing Federal Election Commission filings, the newspaper reported:

Sinema has received more than half a million dollars in campaign donations from private equity group executives in this election cycle alone, representing about 10% of her fundraising from individual donors. This includes individual donations totalling $54,900 from executives at KKR, $35,000 from Carlyle, $27,300 from Apollo, $24,500 from Crow Holdings Capital and $23,300 from Riverside Partners.

The securities and investment sector as a whole has donated more than $2.2 million to Sinema since she was elected in 2017,according to OpenSecrets. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich quipped last week, amid reports of Sinema's plans to undermine her party's efforts to hike taxes on corporations and the wealthy, that Wall Street is "getting a huge return on their investment."

In addition to stripping the carried interest provision from the Inflation Reduction Act, Sinema protected private equity-owned corporations from a new 15% minimum tax on billion-dollar firms.

As The Washington Post reported Sunday:

As originally written, the provision would have required private equity firms to tally profits from their various holdings and pay the tax if the total exceeded the $1 billion threshold.

Sinema, who for over a year has blocked Democratic ambitions to raise taxes, raised objections on Saturday, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks. The senator argued that, without changes to the bill, small and medium-sized businesses that happen to be owned by private equity firms would be exposed to the tax, violating a Democratic pledge to hike taxes only on the largest firms. A Sinema spokeswoman said several Arizona small businesses, including a plant nursery, had raised concerns.

Steve Wamhoff, an analyst at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank, told the Post, "The idea that billion-dollar private equity funds must be protected to save small businesses is absolutely absurd."

:{:{}:

Nevertheless, the newspaper noted, "the last-minute changes mark a significant victory for the private equity industry and an estimated savings of $35 billion over the next decade."

Following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act on Sunday, the progressive tax reform group Patriotic Millionaires ran a mobile billboard around the Capitol to thank Senate Democrats, with the exception of Sinema, who was denounced for being bought by private equity billionaires. The truck made stops at the offices of the American Investment Council and the Carlyle Group in Washington, D.C.

"Bravo to 49 of the 50 senators who voted today to end an era of rampant criminal tax abuse at the highest levels of American society and American business," Erica Payne, founder and president of Patriotic Millionaires, said in a statement. "In a journey of 1,000 miles, this is an impressive first step."

"Shame on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming across the finish line, carrying water for her private equity overloads to the bitter end," Payne continued. "Thanks in large part to Sinema's obstruction, there's more work to be done, but the Inflation Reduction Act is a monumental step in the right direction."

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sinema social worker boosts not guns mental health bill

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8 22 intercept

SINEMA PRIVATELY BLEW UP BIDEN NOMINEE NEEDED TO ENACT REGULATORY AGENDA

Ryan Grim

Sinema quietly killed Biden’s nomination of Ganesh Sitaraman for an important regulatory office.

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she and manchin prefer dead kids to loss of filibuster

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/kyrsten-sinema/

DC now demon term]

U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), one of two major roadblocks to Democrats passing President Joe Biden’s top agenda items including gun control, just one day after an 18-year old gunman massacred 21 people in Texas including 19 elementary school children, offered to be open to discussion but made clear she does not believe in a federal solution to the gun violence that plagues America.

The United States is the only country in the world with a gun crisis of this magnitude. The leading cause of death for children and teens is now a gun.

Republicans allowed the 1994 federal ban on semi-automatic weapons to expire in 2004. A 2019 study found “Mass-shooting fatalities were 70% less likely to occur during the federal ban period.”

Senator Sinema appeared to disagree with that study in remarks to reporters late Wednesday morning.

“I asked her if she was willing to set aside the filibuster,” Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman reports. “She said she didn’t believe ‘that DC solutions are realistic here.'”

The federal assault weapons ban was a “DC solution.”

Sinema also told Sherman that “despite the fact that there is always heated rhetoric here in DC, I do think there’s an opportunity for us to actually have real conversations and try and do something. I think the conversation across America is very different than it is here.”

90 percent of Americans want Congress to pass a background check bill, which the House already has but Senate Republicans refuse to allow. Eliminating the 60-vote threshold in the filibuster might allow that legislation to pass, as it almost did under President Barack Obama, with 54 votes.

“People at home all across America are just, they’re scared,” Sinema added, suggesting that is no reason to make changes to the way the Senate works, or to pass gun control legislation. “They want us to do something.”

Sinema committed to no action other than “to start having conversations again with colleagues on both sides of the aisleto determine whether or not there’s something we can actually do to help increase safety and protect kids across the country.”

The House has already passed multiple bills the Senate could take up and pass — or at least get Senators on the record.

Sen. Sinema’s reluctance to do anything substantive stands in clear contrast to her Arizonan Democratic colleague in the House. U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, long rumored to be a potential primary opponent when Sinema is up for re-election, on Tuesday night blasted Sinema and others, like “baby killer” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), standing in the way of gun control

an 4 22

no lnx twt

Kyrsten Sinema believes that a Build Back Better revival is unlikely: report

Alex Henderson April 06, 2022

The Biden White was seriously disappointed when, in December 2021, centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced that he wouldn’t vote for the Build Back Better Act — an announcement that came after months of negotiations. Nonetheless, Biden supporters hoped that some type of BBB compromise could be worked out with Manchin in 2022. But journalist Hans Nichols, in an Axios article published on April 6, stresses that BBB continues to face another major hurdle from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

“Last year, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) publicly sounded the death knell for President Biden's Build Back Better agenda,” Nichols explains. “Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), his fellow holdout, is privately concurring, Axios has learned…. In closed-door conversations, Sinema has told donors a path to revival is unlikely. That's dampened expectations Congress will act on a slimmed-down bill before Memorial Day. It also means any revived BBB legislation faces an arduous route back to the center of the Senate agenda.”

Sinema, like Manchin, is a Democratic senator with a decidedly centrist voting record. And she isn’t shy about voting with Republicans at times. However, Arizona Central has reported that Sinema is “expected to vote to confirm” Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. On March 10, Sinema described her meeting with Jackson as “very productive” and wrote, “I welcomed hearing directly her belief in the importance of an independent judiciary, her judicial philosophy, and her approach to precedent.”

Manchin has already announced that he will vote to confirm Jackson, as have three moderate Republican senators: Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Sinema, meanwhile, appears to be more enthusiastic about Jackson than she is about reviving the Build Back Better Act.

“No one's reached out to Sinema about the contours of the slimmed-down (Build Back Better) deal Manchin has discussed, people familiar with the matter tell Axios,” Nichols reports. “Instead, Sinema's telling donors most of her focus is on the $10 billion COVID-19 relief bill, theso-called China competition legislationand modifications to theElectoral Reform Act…. With an expected vote on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve as a Supreme Court justice this week, the Senate still wants to act on coronavirus relief before leaving town.”

Nichols adds, “If not, after a two-week recess, senators expect to finalize the new COVID-19 spending and then turn to settling differences with the House over the China bill. As a practical matter, those issues will suck up much of the Senate's bandwidth, leaving little room for Build Back Better talks.”

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might be some rep?

https://www.salon.com/2021/09/23/big-pharma-firms-donated-750k-to-kyrsten-sinema--then-she-opposed-bill/

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https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/12/pharma-lobby-poured-millions-into-darkmoney-groups/

pharmaceutical companies’ top lobbying group funneled millions of dollars to prominent “dark money” groups that pushed industry friendly messages to lawmakers and 2020 voters.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America raised nearly $527 million last year and spent roughly $506 million, new tax returns obtained by OpenSecrets reveal. That’s a record haul for the organization, which is funded by the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.

The trade association made its largest political donation of 2019 — $4.5 million — to the American Action Network, a dark money group that backs House Republicans. The conservative nonprofit and its pharmaceutical industry donor share disdain for proposals to regulate the price of prescription drugs.

The same year it received PhRMA’s donation, theAmerican Action Networklaunched several multi-million dollar ad campaigns opposing President Donald Trump’s proposal to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. This year, the group launched multi-million dollar ad campaigns opposing House Democrats’ bill to lower drug prices and ads boosting vulnerable Republicans who supported an alternative bill considered much friendlier to drugmakers.

The alliance between drugmakers and GOP groups isn’t new. PhRMA has given $14.6 million to the American Action Network since 2016. In that time, the American Action Network became a major contributor to GOP causes. During the 2020 election cycle, it gave $26.4 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House Republicans’ top super PAC that helped unseat several freshman Democrats.

In several key 2020 races, the American Action Network battled with a Democratic group that also received funding from drugmakers. PhRMA gave nearly $1.6 million to Center Forward, a dark money group aligned with moderate Blue Dog Democrats, last year. That nonprofit provided most of the funding for an allied super PAC that spent $3.3 million supporting House Democrats. The pharma-backed GOP and Democratic groups went head-to-head in several key House races, including a tightly contested New York race that has come down to a handful of votes.

Late last year, as Congress debated drug pricing bills, Center Forward flew House staffers to San Francisco to meet with drug company executives. The nonprofit’s board members have also lobbied for pharmaceutical interests. Republicans in Congress are the most vocal opponents of efforts to have the government regulate drug prices — a measure that would damage drugmakers’ profits — but Blue Dog Democrats also pushed back on more aggressive proposals to lower drug prices.

Drugmakers bankroll groups pushing industry talking points to Trump

Prominent drugmakers have spent much of 2020 developing vaccines to fight COVID-19, and the threat of drug pricing legislation in Congress has died down amid the pandemic. But Trump has continued to push forward with executive actions on prescription drugs opposed by the pharmaceutical industry.

PhRMA deployed creative tactics in an attempt to persuade Trump against following through on his campaign promise to aggressively lower drug prices. During the Trump era, the trade association has bankrolled conservative groups that have access to the president.

The American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, received $150,000 from PhRMA in 2019. Led by Trump ally and corporate lobbyist Matt Schlapp, the conservative nonprofit launched theCoalition Against Socialized Medicine late last year to oppose efforts to regulate drug prices and enact single-payer health care proposals.

Nearly all of the coalition’s members received funding from drugmakers within the last two years. Big pharma’s trade group gave $505,000 to American Commitment, $78,500 to Americans for a Balanced Budget and $60,000 to the Taxpayers Protection Alliancelast year alone, according to new tax returns. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance launched a six-figure ad campaign last month aimed at killing “surprise” medical billing legislation and calling it a “handout” to big insurance companies.

New tax returns also show that pharmaceutical manufacturers’ trade group gave $200,000 to the National Sheriffs Association, a nonprofit representing thousands of law enforcement officials. The group launched a six-figure ad campaign last year warning against Trump’s proposal to import drugs from foreign countries, a measure bitterly opposed by drugmakers. Those ads specifically targeted Trump, airing in Washington, D.C., on his favorite Fox News programs.

Trump ultimately approved a plan to import drugs from Canada in September, but its scope was limited. He also moved ahead with a rule that would allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of drugs based on the price foreign governments pay, another measure strongly opposed by drugmakers.

Still, while Trump has moved ahead with industry-opposed measures, his GOP allies in Congress have not made drug pricing legislation a priority. Republican lawmakers and their aides are consistently fed opinion pieces and ad campaigns from conservative groups urging them to reject “socialist price controls.”

Republicans ran political ads in 2020 that mirrored talking points from major healthcare industry players. Super PACs aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) attacked Democrats’ over their support for a public health insurance option, a proposal that could hurt drugmakers’ profits. Those ads cited a study from the Partnership For America’s Health Care Future, a conglomerate of insurers, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies that received $300,000 from PhRMA last year.

Longtime pharmaceutical ally gets seven-figure gift in retirement

One of PhRMA’s largest 2019 gifts was a $2 million donation to the Orrin Hatch Foundation, athink tank and research library launched by former Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The trade group gave $140,000 to the foundation between 2017 and 2018.

Hatch, who retired in January 2019, was known as the pharmaceutical industry’s “man on the Hill” by the end of his 42-year tenure. Hatch helped shape current laws that regulate generic drugs and opposed measures to limit drugmakers’ monopoly protections. As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Hatch was considered the major roadblock to drug pricing changes proposed by Democrats and Trump.

the pharmaceuticals and health products industry gave $2.8 million to Hatch’s campaign committee since 1998, more than any member of Congress who didn’t run for president.When Hatch faced a primary challenge in 2012, PhRMAgave $750,000 to a super PAC boosting his reelection campaign.

During Hatch’s final years in office, his allies reportedly asked pharmaceutical companies and K Street lobbyists for donations to fund the Orrin Hatch Foundation. In 2018, the foundation invited major corporations, including pharmaceutical giant Merck, to a luxury mountain resort for a fundraiser.

While the foundation will serve as a library to catalogue Hatch’s government service and provide civic education, it has also put out policy reports on pressing issues. Its most recent report delves into how lawmakers can craft “sensible solutions to both foster innovative biologics and curb skyrocketing drug prices.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/big-pharma/

Dozens of vulnerable House Democrats are worried that the party's stalled spending negotiations with Joe Manchin will cost them seats in the midterms — and hand Congress to the Republicans

Democrats planned to include legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, fulfilling a campaign promise that helped them win control of the House in the "blue wave" of 2018, as part of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better legislation.

The plan ran into an expensive lobbying blitz from the pharmaceutical industry, prompting Democrats to significantly water down the bill to limit the number of drugs Medicare could negotiate amid pushback from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema:(style="background-color:#ff6600ff"):}::{, D-Ariz., and other industry-aligned Democrats –– and that was before Manchin blew up the Build Back Better package entirely.

"We cannot overstate the paramount urgency of fulfilling the promise of lowering drug prices now for the American people," a group of 40 House Democrats, led by Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., said in a letter to party leaders on Monday.

The letter came after pharmaceutical companies hiked prices on hundreds of medications to start the year. A recent report from the patient advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs found that drug companies have increased prices on more than 550 drugs, including 183 drugs whose prices were raised by $100 or more, and 118 drugs that now cost more than $5,000. Pfizer alone raised prices on 125 drugs, more than any company, even as it shattered profit records thanks to $36 billion in sales from its widely-used COVID vaccine.

"Even as we enter the third year of a pandemic, Big Pharma continues its practice of targeting American patients and consumers with price increases, completely undeterred by the financial and health challenges facing American families," David Mitchell, the founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs, said in a statement.

"Drug corporations can do this because we let them — unlike other nations that use their purchasing power to get a better deal," said Mitchell, who suffers from an incurable blood cancer that is treated with a cocktail of drugs carrying a list price of more than $900,000 per year. The original drug-pricing agreement in the Build Back Better Act, he said, "would curb rising drug prices for millions of patients and halt abusive annual price hikes by limiting increases to the rate of inflation, which is projected to return to 2.3 percent in 2023."

Election forecasts generally suggest that Democrats will lose control of the House in the midterms, making the popular drug legislation a key priority, especially after Manchin and Sinema effectively killed off several other popular Democratic proposals, including a rollback of the Trump-era tax cuts, an extension of the expanded Child Tax Credit, and paid family leave.

A Data for Progress poll last fall found that likely voters support the Medicare legislation by a 55-point margin, including 83% of Democrats, 71% of independents, and 65% of Republicans.

"Taking action on prescription drugs is one of the most popular political issues Democrats can pursue — it's overwhelmingly supported by a bipartisan majority of voters," Sean McElwee, the founder and executive director of Data for Progress, said in an email. "Democrats need to take every opportunity to lower costs for voters and deliver popular legislation that visibly improves their lives this November."

Manchin, who walked away from Build Back Better negotiations in December after the White House called him out by name in a statement over the bill's delay, said on Tuesday that the Build Back Better bill is "dead" and any negotiations on potential spending programs would have to start from scratch. Biden has said that he hopes to include "chunks" of the original bill in a potential compromise package with Manchin.

Last year, Manchin said he supported the drug-price legislation, calling it the "one thing that should be done for sure." But the West Virginia senator appears to be prioritizing bipartisan negotiations to reform the Electoral Count Act over any would-be spending bill, leaving a key Democratic campaign promise in limbo.

"President Biden supports this plan. We support this plan," the House Democratic group said in their letter. "Every Democratic member of the U.S. Senate supports this plan. And most importantly, the American people support this plan. It is time to enact it into law. Already this year, drug corporations have raised prices on more than 400 drugs. Action can't happen soon enough to make medicines more affordable for the millions who need them."

The price increases came after the pharmaceutical lobby shattered its own record for lobbying spending as it rallied around the cause of defeating Biden's legislation. Democrats like Sinema and Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., two of the biggest recipients of Big Pharma donations, led an effort to cut the number of drugs that could be negotiated by Medicare. Even so, the compromise legislation would save taxpayers an estimated $80 billion while capping price increases on certain medications, capping out-of-pocket costs for seniors, and capping the cost of insulin at $35 for people on Medicare and on private plans.

Medicare is the only government agency that is barred from negotiating bulk pricing discounts — the result of an infamous scheme hatched by Big Pharma lobbyists and a Republican leader who rammed the provision into a bill that required Medicare to cover the cost of prescription drugs, shortly before he left Congress and became the top lobbyist for the industry. A three-year investigation by the House Oversight and Reform Committee last month found that pharmaceutical companies exploit the Medicare program to boost revenues, noting that taxpayers could have saved more than $25 billion over five years if Medicare was allowed to negotiate the cost of just seven popular drugs such as Humira and Lyrica.

The investigation also found that drug companies "aggressively raise prices" to hit revenue targets and incentives for executives and have targeted the U.S. market for higher prices while keeping costs lower overseas. The report also concluded that drug companies "abuse the patent system" to suppress competition and maintain monopoly pricing. Drug companies contend that their huge profits are necessary to fund research and development, but the investigation found that the 14 leading drug companies spent $577 billion on stock buybacks and dividends over just five years, $56 billion more than they spent on research and development over that same period.

The limited Medicare negotiation bill approved by the House last year would allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of 20 popular drugs and dozens of insulin products used by 8.5 million Medicare beneficiaries,according to a recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, although many of the drugs with the highest Medicare spending would be exempt.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, which pushed for a more expansive bill that would have saved taxpayers an estimated $450 billion over 10 years but ultimately agreed to back the scaled-down version, set a target date of March 1 to pass the revised spending plan ahead of Biden's State of the Union address.

"This is both achievable and necessary,"CPC Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said in a statement, noting that in the weeks since negotiations had stalled out, "the case for this legislation has only become more urgent."

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ref lobbying blitz

https://www.salon.com/2021/09/23/big-pharma-firms-donated-750k-to-kyrsten-sinema--then-she-opposed-bill/

no lnx many

Big Pharma, medical firms donated $750K to Kyrsten Sinema — then she opposed drug bill

Democrats who now oppose the plan to lower prescription drug costs accused of "carrying water for Big Pharma"

By IGOR DERYSH

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 23, 2021

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the controversial Arizona Democrat who threatens to derail President Biden's legislative agenda, received more than $750,000 in donations from the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. After that, she announced her opposition to a Democratic plan to lower prescription drug costs.

Sinema told White House officials that she opposes House and Senate bills that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug costs, sources told Politico this week. Democrats estimate these bills would save $450 billion over the next decade and thereby pay for a large portion of President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion spending plan. The budget bill would expand child care, health care and paid family leave and would fund programs to combat climate change, among other measures. Three House Democrats have also balked at the plan, although they have offered a "centrist" alternative that would drastically limit which drugs are subject to Medicare negotiation. Sinema reportedly opposes that proposal as well. During her successful 2018 Senate campaign, Sinema repeatedly vowed to lower prescription drug prices and drug costs for seniors.

Sinema is a longtime favorite of the pharmaceutical industry and now appears ready to undermine Biden's entire agenda as Big Pharma wages a lobbying blitz in hopes of torpedoing the bill, which nearly 90% of voters support. Sinema and several House Democrats who oppose the drug pricing plan have received major financial support from the industry. Given a 50-50 Senate and a narrow House majority of 220 to 212 (with three seats currently vacant), their opposition could sink the proposal or even the entire budget bill.

Sinema has received $519,988 from PACs and individuals in the pharmaceutical industry throughout her political career, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. She brought in more than $120,000 in pharma contributions between 2019 and 2020 even though she is not up for re-election until 2024. Sinema has also received $190,161 from donors in the pharmaceutical manufacturing space and $62,797 from the medical supplies industry.

Sinema's office is led by a former lobbyist whose firm worked on behalf of pharmaceutical companies. The senator's chief of staff, Meg Joseph, was a registered lobbyist andprincipal at Clark & Weinstock, where her clients included the health insurer Health Net. During her tenure, the company also lobbied on behalf of numerous pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, drug distributor AmerisourceBergen Corp., and the biotech firm Genzyme Corp. It also lobbied on behalf of Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and AdvaMed, two major industry trade groups.

Sinema did not respond to questions from Salon. Her spokesman Josh LaBombard told Politico that she is committed to "working directly in good faith with her colleagues and President Biden on the proposed budget reconciliation package."

He continued, "Given the size and scope of the proposal, while those discussions are ongoing we are not offering detailed comment on any one proposed piece of the package."

Sinema got major backing from the industry before her threat to derail the Democrats' drug bill. Center Forward, a Washington nonprofit that has received at least $4.5 million from PhRMA, has run TV and digital ads praising Sinema for the past two weeks, according to The Daily Poster, andsent out pro-Sinema mailers urging recipients to thank the senator for "fighting as an independent voice." The group's board includes at least two PhRMA lobbyists who work on drug pricing issues and represent numerous pharmaceutical companies.

Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called out Big Pharma's campaign to defeat the drug pricing legislation during a speech on Tuesday in front of PhRMA's headquarters in Washington.

"The overriding motivation of the pharmaceutical industry is greed," he said. "Their overriding goal is to make as much money as they can by squeezing as much as they possibly can out of the sick, out of the elderly and out of the desperate."

Sinema isn't the only Democrat who vowed to fight for lower drug costs before rejecting a plan that would do just that. Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., in 2019 praised the drug pricing plan but after receiving nearly $230,000 in the 2020 election cycle from the industry, as Salon's Jon Skolnik reported, had an otherwise-unexplained change of heart. Earlier this year, he led a group of 10 House Democrats in opposing the bill in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "If you institute it, you won't have cures because you'll dry up all the private investment that does that research," he told Roll Call after the reversal.

"That's absolutely not true," David Mitchell, founder of the independent nonprofit Patients for Affordable Drugs Now, said in an interview with Salon.

The claim that the bill would hinder development is a Big Pharma "lie" and "scare tactic," said Mitchell, who suffers from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer treated with a combination of drugs that he said carry a price tag of more than $900,000 per year. "For me, as a patient with incurable cancer, it sounds very much like extortion, like the gun is at your head, 'pay whatever we tell you, Mr. Mitchell, or you are going to die,'" he said. "It's bullshit."

Large pharmaceutical companies see profit margins that are much higher than other industries. A recent analysis by the nonprofit West Health Policy Center and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that Big Pharma firms could lose $1 trillion in sales over the next decade and still maintain their current research investments. A recent analysis by the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Democrats' bill would reduce the number of new drugs developed by about two per year over the next two decades.

"You're talking about a tiny impact on new drug development," Mitchell said. "We can compensate for that by sending more money" to the National Institutes of Health, he continued, "because NIH is the engine of innovative new drug development. It's the single largest biomedical research agency in the world. All 356 drugs approved by the FDA from 2010 to 2019 are based on research, basic science from the NIH."

:{:{}:

Peters was one of three Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to vote against the Democrats' drug pricing bill, along with Reps. Kurt Schrader of Oregon and Kathleen Rice of New York. A different committee later advanced the bill but the opposition appears to have enough votes to sink the measure — and the entire spending plan with it.

"I get that the pharmaceutical industry owns the Republican Party and that no Republican voted for this bill," Sanders tweeted after the vote, "but there is no excuse for every Democrat not supporting it."

Peters has received $860,465 from pharmaceutical PACs and employees, according to CRP data, the second most of any industry. He has already received $88,550 from the industry this election cycle, the most of any House member. On the day he sent the letter to Pelosi, Peters received big donations from the CEOs of Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb, as well as from lobbyists at PhRMA.

Schrader, who also signed Peters' letter, has also received extensive financial backing from the industry. He has received $24,500 from pharma PACs and employees this cycle, the second most of any industry, and got $144,252 in 2020, the most of any industry. Throughout his career, Schrader, whose grandfather was an executive at Pfizer, has received $614,830 from the industry, according to CRP data. His former aide left earlier this year and quickly began lobbying for PhRMA, according to The Daily Poster.

Peters and Schrader did not respond to questions from Salon but they have introduced a supposed centrist alternative that would drastically limit the number of drugs whose prices Medicare could negotiate.

"It's masquerading as a Medicare negotiation" bill," Mitchell said, noting that it would exclude Medicare Part D drugs, which make up 83% of Medicare drug spending. The bill would only allow the agency to negotiate a "tiny, tiny sliver" of drugs covered under Part B that are administered by doctors and hospitals, he said, but would exclude drugs that are still in their period of exclusivity, which can last up to 12 years. "To call it Medicare negotiation is a fraud," Mitchell said.

Kathleen Rice's opposition to the bill is less easily explained, since she has not been one of the industry's biggest recipients, collecting a relatively modest $84,000 in campaign contributions from Big Pharma sources, according to CRP data. Furthermore, Rice had twice previously voted for earlier versions of the plan and campaigned on lowering drug prices. In a letter to a constituent who expressed disappointment with her vote, Rice said that she supports "the goals" of the bill and "allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices" but that she opposed the bill because it is being used "as a tool to offset the cost of a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill."

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Rice cited opposition from Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., over the bill's price tag to justify her vote.

"That bill has no chance to become law, as Democrats in the Senate have stated that a bill with such a price tag will not have the votes to pass in their chamber," she said in the letter, which was obtained by the American Prospect. That's a strange and striking argument, considering that Rice voted for many other pieces of legislation that will go into a bill she says "has no chance to become law."

"Rep. Rice believes the House should produce a reconciliation bill that can realistically become law," Rice spokesman Stuart Malec said in a statement to Salon. "She supports Medicare negotiation, but the H.R. 3 drug pricing language in its current form does not have the support to pass the Senate. And Rep. Rice does not support advancing provisions that will jeopardize the bill's final passage in the Senate."

These large donations are only a portion of the pharmaceutical industry's political spending aimed at defeating drug pricing legislation. Pharmaceutical companies have spent more than any industry on federal lobbying this year, shelling out $171 million so far in 2021, according to CRP, more than twice as much as the next biggest spending industry.Pharmaceutical companies spent $309 million on lobbying last year, the most ever. PhRMA alone has spent more than $15 million on lobbying and last week launched a seven-figure ad campaign to oppose the drug pricing plan.

"They're pulling out all the stops to block this," Mitchell said. "What they're fighting to maintain is unilateral power to dictate the prices of brand name drugs to the people of the United States. They have the power to tell us what we're going to pay and we just have to say yes. For them, it's the ability to dictate the prices of drugs to patients like me."

Patient advocates like Mitchell and advocacy groups like the AARP, Protect Our Care and Social Security Works are pushing back through lobbying and ad campaigns of their own.

"Pharma thinks this is just like every other time they have bent D.C. to their will with money, but it isn't," Alex Lawson, executive director of Social Security Works, said in a statement to Salon, noting that grassroots groups have spent years building a broad coalition of support among voters of all political persuasions. "And as for the Dems carrying water for Big Pharma, we are showing them the consequences of that. Their phones are ringing off the hook, there's daily protests at their offices, and their local media is full of stories about their cozy relationships with Big Pharma."

Lawson expressed optimism that Biden and Pelosi can get the legislation passed, given the widespread public support for this issue.

"Big Pharma is used to winning," he said. "They've never gone up against a movement this powerful."

Patients for Affordable Drugs Now has also launched an ad campaign targeting Peters' and Rice's districts, highlighting members of Congress for "choosing Big Pharma over patients."

"We have the best opportunity that we've had in two decades to actually enact reforms that will meaningfully lower the prices of prescription drugs to the American people and stop subjecting us to the power of multinational corporations," Mitchell said. "It's an uphill fight all the way because we know who we're up against. I think we have a really good shot of getting it done."

IGOR DERYSH

Igor Derysh is Salon's Deputy News and Politics Editor. His work has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and Baltimore Sun.

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Patriotic Millionaires

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/wealthy-progressives-back-primaries-against-dems-tanking-party-agenda/

...

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222

Everyone loves a good pizza party, which is what I’m imagining the energy giant NextEra held in offices across the country as the company compelled employees to donate to Kyrsten Sinema last year. A reading of donations to the Arizona senator from 2021 Q4 is a who’s-who of executives, vice presidents, and managers within the company, broken up occasionally with infusions of cash from workers at Florida Power and Light—a subsidy of NextEra—and regular Americans who felt that Sinema’s position as a self-proclaimed progressive Democrat would somehow shield her from turning out like *gestures vaguely* this. The Guardian homed in on the mega-donors who met with Sinema during a Jan. 18 event at the River Oaks Country Club in Houston. They includeConocoPhilips head Ryan Lance and Continental Resources chairman Harold Hamm.

Rolling Stone, meanwhile, looked at GOP mega-donors interested in Sinema’s obstructionism like Harlan Crow, an avid Greg Abbott fan, and Ken Langone, who also gave fellow useless Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin a cash infusion. Crow was one of a few donors who were refunded because of their largesse, though those funds have likely been made up by the more than 45 NextEra employees on that Q4 list. The donations, which range from $250 to $2,000, total $51,250 from NextEra alone. PACs associated with the fossil fuel industry, like ExxonMobil PAC, American Petroleum Industry PAC, and Devon Energy Corporation PAC, also showed their love for Sinema to the tune of $2,500 apiece. Hope the cheese and pepperoni were worth it to thwart democracy, y’all!

Kidding aside and no disrespect to pizza, these donors are relative newcomers to Sinema. FEC data shows little movement from NextEra when it comes to lining Sinema’s pockets, and early donor cycles show more teachers and firefighters, plus venture capitalists and angel investors donating to Sinema instead. It’s quite the about-face for a candidate many hailed as a welcomed breath of fresh air for Arizona, who cut her teeth in as an adjunct professor and faculty member for the Center for Progressive Leadership before turning to politics.

If you truly follow the money, NextEra will lead you to its ambitious Sonoran Solar Project, which many, many Arizonans are opposed to based on its proximity to the Sonoran Desert National Monument. The GOP mega-donors interested in courting Sinema are doing so because it’s business as usual (regardless of party) if they can get someone to vote against the country’s better interests. But for NextEra, an eye-catching lawmaker doing its dirty work would make that more than $50K in donations well worth the investment.

There’ve been reports of Sinema losing support from donors who view her as a traitorous egoist more interested in boosting her profile than equality. The same does not go for Sinema’s lawmaker-in-arms Manchin. According to CNBC, Manchin’s rejection of Build Back Better earned him $300,000 over the course of last quarter.Manchin is worth $7.6 million thanks to his coal dealings. Can you imagine how much Sinema’s worth could balloon to were she to firmly reject what little Democratic support she’s got in favor of aligning with her recent batch of donors, like Texas Energy’s Kane Weiner and Pacific Power Source Inc. president Kevin Voelcker? The last thing the country needs is Manchin 2.0 or worse. Hell, Manchin in his current state of being isn’t all that great. Call on both Manchin and Sinema to return their corporate and GOP donations.

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no lnx twt

Kyrsten Sinema is raking in cash from GOP and fossil fuel donors — but it may not be enough to win re-election

Meaghan Ellis February 01, 2022

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) is amassing a sizable war chest as a result of Republican donors, according to new financial disclosures. But a new analysis explains why money may not even be enough to secure Sinema's re-election.

According to new Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, the lawmaker raked in approximately $1.6 million in the 4th quarter of 2021. The New York Times' Shane Goldmacher recently took to Twitter with details about the donations Sinema has received as he revealed the names of some of her biggest donors.

Per The Rolling Stone, Goldmacher noted that Sinema's big donors include: "Harlan Crow, a massive GOP donor the Texas Tribune called 'one of the biggest whales in the country'; Ken Langone, another massive GOP donor who felt 'betrayed' by Trump and switched to Biden; Nelson Peltz, the aforementioned Manchin confidante; andMiguel B. 'Mike' Fernandez, a Florida health care billionairewho threw his fortune behind Hillary in 2016 after Jeb Bush fizzled out."

In addition to the donors Goldmacher listed, Sinema has attracted Republican fossil fuel donors like Continental Resources chairman Harold Hamm and ConocoPhillipsCEO Ryan Lance. Republican voters have also applauded Sinema for her adamant support of the Senate filibuster.

But despite raking in the big bucks, Sinema still faces a number of obstacles that could compromise her chances of re-election. According to the analysis written by The Intelligencer's Ed Kilgore, money from Republican donors won't necessarily help Sinema win over Democratic voters. In fact, Kilgore explains why Sinema's war chest likely will not prove to be beneficial on the Republican side either.

Kilgore argues that Sinema's moderate stance on key issues and voting record won't be enough to win unwavering support from Republican voters.

"Trouble is, smiling upon a pol for screwing up the hated opposition party’s agenda is not the same as voting to reelect her," Kilgore wrote. "According to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis of Sinema’s voting during her two years in the Senate when Trump was president, she voted with the 45th president half the time. That was about the same as Manchin’s level, but far lower than nearly all Republicans. The GOP is a party with extremely low tolerance for dissidence."

Voter registration is another barrier. "The Republican voters who give Sinema favorable ratings can’t cross over to support her in a Democratic primary," Kilgore explained, adding, "and aren’t going to vote for her in a general election against an actual Republican."

Sinema could also end up splitting the vote with a Democratic opponent that hopes to unseat her. But Kilgore is confident about one thing. He wrote, "Whether you view her as a brave and principled dissident or a scurrilous traitor, Sinema is probably, from a political point of view, toast."

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an says support crumbles, wishful? can she stay w/ corp $?

. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona tried her damndest to sell the idea that a random Senate rule was far more important than the fundamental right to vote, but Democratic voters and groups don’t seem to be buying that bridge to fascism.

Not only does Sinema have an abysmal 8% favorability rating among Arizona Democrats, many of her biggest progressive backers are giving her the heave-ho after she helped kill critical voting rights legislation in the upper chamber.

Among the most impactful reversals came from EMILY's List, a group dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women, and NARAL, which fights for reproductive freedom across the nation. Both high-profile funders backed her in 2018 when she first ran for Senate, but this week they severed ties with the Arizona senator over her refusal to alter the filibuster in order to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act.

"We believe the decision by Sen. Sinema is not only a blow to voting rights and our electoral system but also to the work of all of the partners who supported her victory and her constituents who tried to communicate the importance of this bill," wrote EMILY's List President Laphonza Butler. As a result, Butler added, "We will no longer be able to endorse Sen. Sinema moving forward."

Statements from both groups noted that Sinema's elevation of the Senate GOP minority over the will of a democratic majority automatically dooms any legislation that would advance voting rights, abortion access, immigrant rights, LGBTQ equality, and other Democratic priorities.

“Without ensuring that voters have the freedom to participate in safe and accessible elections, a minority with a regressive agenda and a hostility to reproductive freedom will continue to block the will of the majority of Americans,” wrote NARAL President Mini Timmaraju.

NARAL also said it would no longer endorse any U.S. senator "who doesn’t support changing the Senate rules to pass voting rights legislation."

"Our democracy is on the line," the group addedin a tweet.

EMILY’s List’s Butler offered a similar sentiment. “Protecting the right to choose is not possible without access to the ballot box," she said. EMILY's List has been one of Sinema's most dedicated backers, funding her rise through Congress to the tune of $485,000, according to Bloomberg News.

LPAC, a group that focuses on electing LGBTQ women to office, also issued a statement putting Sinema on notice that she would likely lose their endorsement.

"LPAC and its supporters have backed Senator Kyrsten Sinema in the past because of her stated commitment to our shared values. Any candidate wishing to have our support in the future must fully commit to protecting voting rights; anything less will fail to earn our endorsement," read the statement, which urged immediate action on votings rights legislation.

Planned Parenthood Action Fund seemed similarly poised to cut Sinema loose, though the group didn't explicitly mention her by name.

"Any Senator who chooses to protect arcane Senate rules over the freedom to vote is betraying their constituents & harming the fight for reproductive rights. They will have to live with the political consequences,"tweeted Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson.

Following her speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, Sinema was warmly greeted by several GOP senators who clearly applauded her dedication to giving them veto power over our democracy.

Hopefully that GOP receiving line was deeply satisfying to Sinema, because whatever future she might have had in the Democratic Party is over.

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placard say a maj never passed a bill ( fillibuster?) vs 160x Rp amy Klobuchar

Manchin pushes a revisionist history in his fight to preserve the filibuster

Jon Skolnik Salon

January 21, 2022

On Wednesday, just months out from the midterm elections, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., andKyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., blocked their own party's effort to pass a sweeping voting rights overhaul by refusing to exempt...

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an 11 21

official Washington will be quiet this week, but the fallout from the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict will continue to divide America along the Trumpian fault lines of fear, violence, and racism.

Closing arguments are scheduled today in the trial of three men charged with the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia. Though they chased him, they are claiming self-defense because, they say, Arbery tried to get control of a shotgun one of them was carrying. As with the Rittenhouse case, the trial raises questions of how self-defense laws will hold up as guns proliferate. Regardless of how it come out, the case also illustrates America's deepening split.

Congress's continuing investigation into the January 6 insurrection reveals the same rift, as will the Supreme Court's expected decision on executive privilege in that investigation, and its likely move to strike down New York State's law requiring people seeking licenses to carry handguns in public to show a "proper cause," as violating the Second Amendment.

The fault line has now extended into almost every facet of American lawmaking. When the "Build Back Better" bill passed the House late Friday night, 220 out of 221 Democrats voted for it. But all of the House's 213 Republicans voted against it. Why? The measures in the bill are hugely popular, according to polls. The bill includes the largest expansion of federal child-care assistance in history; free, universal prekindergarten for all American children ages 3 and 4; Medicare benefits covering hearing services; government for the first time being allowed to negotiate some prescription drug prices, aiming to lower the costs that seniors pay for lifesaving medicines such as insulin; and more than $550 billion to combat climate change — promoting greener energy and providing new perks for Americans who buy electric vehicles.

But policy popularity may be no match for fear, violence, and racism — whichRepublicans and the moneyed interests are now diligently exploiting to kill the bill in the Senate.So-called "moderate" Democrats (Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) have expressed skepticism about its cost and scope. It would be one thing if Manchin's and Sinema's reservations were in good faith, but how can they be? Manchin frets about the bill's effects on inflation even though the bill lowers prices for most Americans of major expenses like childcare, drugs, and healthcare. Sinema says she prefers "legislation that is crafted in a bipartisan way," but who is she kidding? Mitch McConnell has made clear he won't allow a single Republican senator to vote for the bill.

The votes of every Senate Democrat are needed if the bill is to pass, but Manchin and Sinema are allowing rightwing tropes — and the big money behind them — to divide Democrats. As the New York Times reported yesterday, cash has poured into Manchin's and Sinema's political coffers from political action committees and donors linked to Wall Street, Big Pharma, and Big Energy, which have opposed proposals in the bill that Manchin and Sinema helped scale back.

The question that keeps haunting me is this: Is an America so deeply divided, and awash in political money that exploits that divide, any longer capable of doing bold things that are broadly popular?The only big thing we continue to do is feed the ravenous military-industrial complex— itself founded on fear, violence, and racism. (Efforts to whip up a new cold war with China conjure up old fears of a "yellow peril.") Congress is on the verge of giving the Pentagon even more money than the Pentagon and the Biden administration are seeking. The nation's military tab over the next ten years will be upwards of $8 trillion and is not paid for with expected revenue, in sharp contrast with the $2 trillion cost of the House's "Build Back America" plan, which would be paid for with tax increases on the wealthy and big corporations.

That America is becoming two separate nations is threatening everything we value. The most obvious beneficiaries (besides top executives of big corporations and Wall Street) are Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Rupert Murdoch, who appear to be doing whatever they can to divide us even further.

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censure threat? state dem party?

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/sinema/

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/sinema-mlms/

2x down on filibuster

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manchema BBB

manchin and Sinema face backlash after posting grotesque tweets congratulating themselves

Walter Einenkel Daily Kos

October 29, 2021

On Thursday, after weeks and weeks of goalpost-moving, constant *c*ompromising on what was already a compromise, incoherent messaging, and consternation, Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema finally agreed to...

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1021

https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/kyrsten-sinema-2655312237/

no lnx

Head of Koch-tied group urges Sinema to 'stay strong' as she opposes tax hikes on rich

Jake Johnson and Common Dreams October 17, 2021

The head of a right-wing organization with ties to the Koch network offered words of encouragement to Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on Thursday amid reports that she's holding up her party's budget reconciliation package over its proposed tax hikes on the rich and big businesses.

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Citing two unnamed Senate Democratic aides, Insider reported Thursday that "a major holdup" on ongoing talks over Democrats' Build Back Better Act "is Sinema's opposition to any tax increases for individuals and large corporations."

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"Her position threatens to deprive the package of over $700 billion in revenue to finance the bulk of President Joe Biden's agenda," Insider noted. "Biden has repeatedly promised his plan will be paid for and won't add to the federal deficit."

In response to Insider's story, which confirms earlier reporting from the New York Times, American Commitment president Phil Kerpen urged Sinema to "stay strong," a sentiment that several Senate Republicans have echoed in recent days.

Kerpen "has been affiliated with a number of organizations founded by or with close links to the Kochs, including Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, and the Club for Growth," according to SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy.

"Between 2011 and 2012, American Commitment received grants totaling $11.3 million from three organizations with close ties to the Koch brothers: Freedom Partners, the Center to Protect Patient Rights, and Americans for Responsible Leadership, SourceWatch notes.

The Koch network is part of the massive lobbying blitz that corporate America has launched in an effort to tank the reconciliation package.

As Rolling Stone reported last month, "Koch-aligned groups are together spending millions of dollars on advertising, targeting moderate Democratic lawmakers, and pushing their influence in the halls of Congress to whittle down or outright kill the sweeping policy package, which would represent the largest expansion of the social safety net in the past 50 years and the biggest step toward addressing climate change in U.S. history."

Sinema's opposition to the popular reconciliation bill—a centerpiece of Biden's domestic policy agenda—is imperiling its chances of passing the narrowly divided Congress, prompting growing concerns that Democrats are on the verge of missing an opportunity to make historic investments in green energy, child care, Medicare expansion, and other priorities.

"It's wrong that she is helping profitable big corporations avoid taxes," the Green New Deal Network, an environmental coalition, said of Sinema. "There's no policy argument for it and no political justification."

A recent survey conducted by the progressive polling firm Data for Progress found that two-thirds of Arizona voters support raising the corporate tax rate as a way to fund the reconciliation package. An even larger majority—75%—supports higher taxes on wealthy individuals.

Under House Democrats' reconciliation plan, the corporate tax rate would rise to 26.5%—a partial reversal of the GOP's 2017 tax law—while the top marginal rate for individuals would rise to 39.6%, the level that prevailed before former President Donald Trump took office.

Given the enormous stakes of the reconciliation fight, congressional Democrats are reportedly "getting impatient with President Biden's kid-glove approach to negotiating" with Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), another major obstacle to the passage of the Build Back Better Act.

Steve Jarding, a Democratic strategist and former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee aide, told The Hill that he believes the inability to get Sinema, Manchin, and other right-wing Democratic holdouts on board is "a failure on the part of the Biden administration."

"You're the president of the United States, you've got all the leverage in the world," said Jarding. "We need this stuff. America needs it and [Manchin and Sinema] are playing politics with it."

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/sinema-2655311879/

rx $

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https://www.ecowatch.com/kyrsten-sinema-environment-climate-change-2619538159.html

thom h

when Bobby Kennedy went after organized crime in the early 1960s, one of the things he learned was that the Mafia had a series of rituals new members went through to declare their loyalty and promise they'd never turn away from their new benefactors. Once in, they'd be showered with money and protection, but they could never leave and even facedserious problems if they betrayed the syndicate.

Which brings us to the story of Kyrsten Sinema.

For a republican democracy to actually work, average citizens with a passion for making their country better must be able to run for public office without needing wealthy or powerful patrons; this is a concept thatdates back to Aristotle's rantson the topic. And Sinema was, in the beginning, just that sort of person. But I'm getting ahead of myself…

After the Nixon and Agnew bribery scandals were fully revealed with a series of congressional investigations leading to Nixon's resignation in 1974, Congress passed and President Jerry Ford signed into law a series of "good government" laws that provided for public funding of elections and strictly limited the role of big money in campaigns.

Just like the 1/6 attack on the Capitol produced a "select" committee to investigate the anti-democracy crimes of Donald Trump and his cronies, Congress authorized the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to look into Nixon's abuses and make recommendations.

The committee's 100-page report documented how Nixon had taken bribes (most notably $400,000 from ITT to squash an antitrust lawsuit); used "dark" money from wealthy friends and corporations to set up astroturf "citizens committees" (an early version of the Tea Party) to make it appear he had widespread support among the American public; and used off-the-books money to both support loyal Republican politicians whose help he needed as well as to pay for his "opposition research" surveillance which included the Watergate break-in of the DNC's headquarters.

In response to the report, Congress passed an exhaustive set of new laws and regulations, most significantly creating from scratch the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), outlawing secret donations to politicians while providing for public funding of federal elections to diminish the power of big money. (Jimmy Carter was the only presidential candidate to win using such public funding.)

Over the years since, conservatives on the Supreme Court have repeatedly gutted provisions of the 1974 amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), most famously in 2010 with their notorious Citizens United decision,

with that stroke, over the loud objections of the four "liberals" on the Court, corporations were absolutely deemed as "persons" with full constitutional rights, and billionaires or corporations pouring massive amounts of money into campaign coffers was changed from "bribery and political corruption" to an exercise of the constitutionally-protected "right of free speech."

Into this milieu stepped Kyrsten Sinema, running from a seat in the Arizona Senate for the US House of Representatives in 2012 as an "out" bisexual and political progressive. The campaign quickly turned ugly.

Following the Citizens United script, the Republican she confronted in that race (Vernon Parker) used corporate and billionaire money to carpet-bomb their district airwaves with ads calling her "a radical left-wing activist promoting hatred toward our country, our allies, and our families" and warning people that she "engaged in pagan rituals.

[vid]

the district was heavily Democratic (Obama handily won it that year) but the race was close enough that it took six full days for the AP to call it for Sinema. And that, apparently, was when she decided that if you can only barely beat them, you'd damn well better join them.

Sinema quickly joined other Democrats who'd followed the Citizens United path to the flashing neon lights of big money, joining the so-called "Problem Solvers" caucus that owes its existence in part to the Wall Street-funded front group "No Labels."

Quietly and without fanfare, she began voting with Republicans and the corporate- and billionaire-owned Democrats, supporting efforts to deregulate big banks, "reform" Social Security and Medicare, and make it harder to for government to protect regular investors or even buyers of used cars from being ripped off.

She voted with the Chamber 77 percent of the time in her first term; in return, political networks run by rightwing billionaires and the US Chamber of Commerce showered her with support. In her first re-election race, in 2014, she was one of only five democrats endorsed by the notoriously rightwing Chamber.

She'd proved herself as a "made woman," just like the old mafiosi documented by RFK in the 1960s, willing to do whatever it takes, compromise whatever principles she espoused, to get into and stay in the good graces of the large and well-funded rightwing syndicates unleashed by Citizens United.

So it should surprise precisely nobody that Sinema is parroting the Chamber's and the billionaire network's line that President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan is too generous in helping and protecting average Americans and too punitive in taxing the morbidly rich. After all, once you're in, you leave at your own considerable peril, even when 70 percent of your state's voters want the bill to pass.

And this is a genuine crisis for America because if President Biden is frustrated in his attempt to pass his Build Back Better legislation (that is overwhelmingly supported by Americans across the political spectrum) — all because business groups, giant corporations and rightwing billionaires are asserting ownership over their two "made" senators — there's a very good chance that today's cynicism and political violence is just a preview of the rest of the decade.

But this isn't as much a story about Sinema as it is about today's larger political dysfunction for which she's become, along with Joe Manchin, a poster child.

Increasingly, because of the Supreme Court's betrayal of American values, it's become impossible for people like the younger Sinema to rise from social worker to the United States Senate without big money behind them. Our media is absolutely unwilling to call this what even Andrew Jackson would have labeled it: political corruption. But that's what it is and it's eating away at our republic like a metastasized cancer.

A guest on Brian Stelter's CNN program yesterday pointed out that there are today more autocracies in the world than democracies and, generally, democracies are on the decline. This corruption of everyday politics by the rich and powerful is how democracies begin the shift to autocracy or oligarchy, as I document in gruesome detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class.

While the naked corruption of Sinema and Joe Manchin is a source of outrage for Democrats across America, what's far more important is that it reveals how deep the rot of money in American politics has gone, thanks entirely to a corrupted Supreme Court.

In Justice Stevens' dissent in *Citizens United*, he pointed out that corporations in their modern form didn't even exist when the Constitution was written in 1787 and got its first ten amendments in 1791, including the First which protects free speech.

"All general business corporation statues appear to date from well after 1800," Stevens pointed out to his conservative colleagues on the Court. "The Framers thus took it as a given that corporations could be comprehensively regulated in the service of the public welfare. Unlike our colleagues, they had little trouble distinguishing corporations from human beings, and when they constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans they had in mind.

"The fact that corporations are different from human beings might seem to need no elaboration, except that the majority opinion almost completely elides it…. Unlike natural persons, corporations have 'limited liability' for their owners and managers, 'perpetual life,' separation of ownership and control, 'and favorable treatment of the accumulation of assets….' Unlike voters in U.S. elections, corporations may be foreign controlled."

Noting that corporations "inescapably structure the life of every citizen," Stevens continued: "It might be added that corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established."

Even worse than the short-term effect of a corporation's dominating an election or a ballot initiative, Stevens said (as if he had a time machine to look at us now),was the fact that corporations corrupting politics would, inevitably, cause average working Americans — the 95 percent who make less than $100,000 a year — to conclude that their "democracy" is now rigged.

The result, Stevens wrote, is that average people would simply stop participating in politics, stop being informed about politics, and stop voting…or become angry and cynical. Our democracy, he suggested, would be immeasurably damaged and ultimately vulnerable to corporate-supported demagogues and oligarchs. Our constitutional republic, ifCitizens United stands, could wither and could die.

"In addition to this immediate drowning out of noncorporate voices," Stevens wrote in 2010, "there may be deleterious effects that follow soon thereafter. Corporate 'domination' of electioneering can generate the impression that corporations dominate our democracy.

"When citizens turn on their televisions and radios before an election and hear only corporate electioneering, they may lose faith in their capacity, as citizens, to influence public policy. A Government captured by corporate interests, they may come to believe, will be neither responsive to their needs nor willing to give their views a fair hearing.

"The predictable result is cynicism and disenchantment: an increased perception that large spenders 'call the tune' and a reduced 'willingness of voters to take part in democratic governance.' To the extent that corporations are allowed to exert undue influence in electoral races, the speech of the eventual winners of those races may also be chilled." (Emphasis mine)

As if he were looking at Kyrsten Sinema facing a tough choice about her own political survival leading up to the 2014 election, Stevens added:

"Politicians who fear that a certain corporation can make or break their reelection chances may be cowed into silence about that corporation."

And, again looking into his time machine to today, the now-deceased Stevens pointed to the frustration of average Americans with Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

"On a variety of levels, unregulated corporate electioneering might diminish the ability of citizens to 'hold officials accountable to the people,' and disserve the goal of a public debate that is 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.'"

Stevens and his fellow "liberals" on the Court were both prescient and right.

They warned in their dissent that foreign money would corrupt our elections and we saw that in a big way in 2016. There's apparently no way of knowing how much of today's political turmoil — from school board to election commission to hospital and airplane violence — is being orchestrated and amplified by foreign players on social media masquerading as Americans to weaken our country.

They warned that because of the Citizens United decision Americans would become cynical and reactionary; that's happening today. Armed militias are in our streets, people are regularly assaulted for their perceived politics, and rightwing media demagogues make millions (literally) promoting hate and fear.

And, they warned, it could doom our republic, something that's now within our sight.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Healthcare and more than 30+ other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute and his writings are archived at hartmannreport.com.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

She’s very brazenly doubling down': Kyrsten Sinema appears impervious to 'pressure' from the left — here's why

Alex Henderson

During the Biden era, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has become one of the centrist Democrats who — along with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — frustrates the progressive...

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straw grasp?

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (R-Ariz.) is facing a serious ultimatum from one of her biggest stats supporters. According to HuffPost, former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods has now reached his breaking point with Sinema's stance on the filibuster.

Woods, a former Republican who worked on late Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign but switched to the Democratic Party in 2018, endorsed Sinema during her election campaign in 2018. Now, he appears to be concerned about the decision he made to do so.

On Friday, June 4, Woods sounded off as he shared his concerns about **Sinema's unwavering support of the filibuster.

"I do think that Sen. Sinema and every senator should support ending the filibuster for the voting rights bill," he said, adding, "To keep the Jim Crow filibuster while losing some of these basic voting rights that are central to our democracy is preposterous."

"Sen. Sinema should know that, so should Sen. Manchin," Woods said, referring to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who has also been quite vocal about his opposition toward the filibuster's removal. "At the end of the day, I'm very hopeful that they'll come around and do the right thing. But if they don't, then I don't think they belong in the Senate anymore."

Despite the ultimatum, heightened intraparty resistance, and criticism, Sinema has made it clear that she supports the measure. In a public statement released on Friday, the Arizona Democratic lawmaker doubled down on her belief as she works with Republican lawmakers' efforts to preserve the filibuster.

"It is a tool that protects the democracy of our nation," Sinema said Tuesday in Tucson, at an event with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). "Rather than allowing our country to ricochet wildly every two to four years back and forth between policies, the idea of the filibuster was created by those who came before to create comity and to encourage bipartisanship and work together."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Krysten Sinema torched on Twitter after insisting the Jan. 6 ... ›

Sinema's schtick is wearing thin in Arizona

Kos Daily Kos

March 25, 2021

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema was the first Democrat elected to the Senate in her state in 30 years. The birthplace of the modern conservative movement, her 2018 victory was considered a massive coup for...

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biden cab confirm?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/kyrsten-sinema/

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better

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) has introduced a bill to permanently ban new uranium mining near Grand Canyon National Park, reports KJZZ. It’s a companion to a bill that the House of Representatives passed in October on a vote of 236 to 185, per GovTrack, with nine Republicans joining the Democratic majority in favor of the ban.

My hot take: So far, as the Bulletin of the Union of Concerned Scientists notes, the White House backs expanded uranium mining in the U.S. But attention on this move to protect the Grand Canyon (a feel-good-about-America issue if ever there was one) could help it break through Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ken.) blockade of nearly 300 bipartisan bills in the Senate. Why? Because support for environmental and climate action continues to rise among some important Republican voter groups already critical of the Trump administration’s rollbacks and climate denial, according to an October survey by the Pew Research Center, including Millennials, Generation Z, and “GOP women.”

https://www.ecowatch.com/kyrsten-sinema-environment-climate-change-2619538159.html

What Kyrsten Sinema’s Historic Win Could Mean for the Environment

A little less than a week after the midterm election, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema has edged out Republican Martha McSally to become Arizona's first female Senator and the first openly bisexual member of Congress, The Guardian reported. She is the first Democrat to win an Arizona Senate seat since 1976. SSinema, who has served in the House of Representatives since 2013, has moved to the right since her early days as a Green party activist.During the 2018 midterm campaign, she promoted herself as an independent aisle-crosser in the tradition of late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain.

"As long as I've served Arizona, I've worked to help others see our common humanity & find common ground. That's the same approach I'll take to representing our great state in the Senate, where I'll be an independent voice for all Arizonans," she said in a tweet announcing her win.

But even if she has distanced herself from her Green party roots—the environment does not feature among the "priorities" listed on her Senate campaign page—Simena's win is likely a net positive for the environment. As a Congresswoman, she earned a 2017 score of 80 percent and a lifetime score of 78 percent from the League of Conservation Voters. Her opponent, McSally, also a House member, earned a 2017 score of 11 percent and a lifetime score of 6.

When The Arizona Republic asked both candidates about their stance on climate change, the two gave markedly different answers.

In response to the questions from The Republic, Sinema said she supports "thoughtful and reasonable approaches to reduce climate pollution while ensuring Arizona families and businesses have affordable, reliable energy to power our economy into the future."

She said she has supported more solar energy development and "common sense policies like the renewable tax credit, energy efficiency incentives, and state-level renewable portfolios that reduce emissions and provide a smooth transition to cleaner sources of energy."

McSally, on the other hand, took the opportunity to criticize steps taken by former President Barack Obama to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. She did not deny climate science, but still said she had "fought against" regulations meant to address it.

"Crushing regulations, such as the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States, only serve as federal overreaches that further burden Arizona's small businesses and farmers and harm those in poverty with increased utility bills," McSally said in an email.

However, Sinema's desire to emphasize working with Republicans has sometimes caused her to waffle on the causes of climate change. In a televised debate with McSally, a listener asked the candidates if they believed climate change was a "man-made problem" and what they would do to combat it, particularly when it comes to preserving Arizona's water.

"Well, I do believe that climate change is real, and I think it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to spend time debating how we got to the place that we are today. What does make sense is for individuals who have the ability to make a difference moving forward to work together to make that difference," she said. She then promised to work with Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, the Republican appointed to fill in for McCain after his death, on water conservation in the state.

McSally did not answer with her opinion on climate change specifically, but talked about the importance of water before moving on to address issues related to the military and to criticize Sinema for anti-war statements made in 2003.

You can see the video here:

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dem Kyrsten Sinema’s lead in Arizona’s Senate race continues to grow as the votes are counted. Republican Martha McSally led in the early counting, but Sinema took the lead Thursday night and hasn't looked back. As of Sunday evening, Sinema’s lead was 32,640, for a 49.6 percent to 48.1 percent lead. Republicans have taken this about as well as you’d expect, with Donald Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Commission alike suggesting that there’s something shady and underhanded about counting every vote.

Two former aides to the late Sen. John McCain called out the Republican efforts to undermine democracy in Arizona. Mark Salter, McCain’s longtime speechwriter and co-author, responded to the NRSC’s accusation that Democrats are “cook[ing] the books” for Sinema with a tweet saying “Stop doing this, NRSC. McSally is losing fair and square, and she’s underperforming in more than Maricopa. The race is almost certainly lost and nothing will change that. All this does is poison our politics more. Despicable.”

Salter’s tweet was followed by one from John Weaver, an adviser to McCain and to Ohio Gov. John Kasich, saying “I ran @SenJohnMcCain political world for 10 years & can tell you what is going on in AZ is above board & by the rules. The @NRSC & @SenCoryGardner are not only spreading lies & nutty theories, but undermining democracy. @RepMcSally lost this race when she became Trump clone.”

But Republicans are engaging in classic projection: they’ve worked to cook the books and suppress the votes and stop the counting everywhere they could, so they assume that’s what Democrats are doing. And even if they don’t believe their spin, undermining the public’s faith in democracy is a good move for the Republican Party’s future.

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