#don mcgahn

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Capitalists hate capitalism

As the Marxist agitator Adam Smith once said, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Smith understood that capitalists hate capitalism. They don’t want to compete with one another, because that would interfere with their ability to raise the prices their customers pay and reduce the wages they pay their workers. Thus Peter Thiel’s anticapitalist rallying cry, “competition is for losers,” or Warren Buffett’s extreme horniness for businesses with “wide, sustainable moats.”

These anti-capitalist capitalists love big government. They love no-bid military contracts, they love ACA subsidies for health insurance companies, they love Farm Bill cash for Cargill and Monsanto. What they don’t love is markets.

Case in point: pharma giant Merck. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) includes a provision that allows Medicare to (finally) start (weakly) negotiating the prices it pays for (a tiny handful of) drugs. If you’re scratching your head and wondering if you understood that correctly, let me assure you, you did: the US government is currently prohibited from negotiating drug prices when it bargains with pharma companies.

In other words: Medicare simply pays a pharma companies — whose products build on billions in publicly funded basic research, whose taxes are reduced by billions in research credits, whose patents are backstopped by billions in enforcement — whatever it demands.

To do otherwise, you see, would be socialism. Markets are “efficient” because they “discover prices” through bidding and selling. In the case of publicly purchased drugs, the price that Uncle Sucker “discovers” is inevitably “a titanic sum” or possibly “add a couple more zeroes, wouldya?”

Enter the IRA. Starting in 2026, Medicare will be permitted to negotiate the price of ten (10) drugs. The negotiations will use the prices of other drugs from the dysfunctional, monopolized market as a starting point and go up from there. The negotiations go on for three years, and there are multiple stages where pharma companies can hit pause with court challenges:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-05-11-regulators-bungling-drug-price-reform/

The system will not consider the prices that Medicaid or the VA (which are allowed to bargain on prices) pay. Nor will it consider the prices that other governments pay — the US is alone in the wealthy world in offering the anticapitalist price-taking posture when dickering with the pharma companies.

But this isn’t enough for Merck. They are suing the Biden administration over the IRA’s drug pricing plan, arguing that it is an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/06/merck-sues-biden-administration-over-medicare-drug-price-negotiations.html

Merck is represented by Big Law firm Jones Day, who made their bones by representing the RJ Reynolds from smokers with lung-cancer, arguing that the smoking/cancer link wasn’t scientifically sound. That’s not the only fanciful argument they put before a judge: Jones Day also represented Trump in his attempts to overturn the 2020 election (they also hired Trump’s counsel Don McGahn as he exited the White House’s revolving door).

As Ryan Cooper writes for The American Prospect, Merck’s argument is that the “fair market” value of its drugs can only be discovered if its single largest customer — Medicare — simply pays whatever Merck demands of it:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-06-08-merck-negotiating-drug-prices-unconstitutional/

They explicitly denounce the idea that a powerful buyer should use its market power to extract price concessions from sellers like Merck: “leveraging all federal insurance benefits (amounting to over half of the prescription drug market) to coerce companies to abandon their First and Fifth Amendment rights is a quintessential unconstitutional condition.”

Rebutting this argument, Health Secretary Xavier Becerra said, “negotiating for the best price is as American as apple pie. Since when is competition in this American system a bad thing? Why should we be the patsies around the world and pay the highest prices for medicines?”

The irony here is that Merck itself is a very powerful buyer. Whether negotiating commercial leases, raw materials or wages, Merck is ruthless in extracting the lowest prices it can from its suppliers. The company attained its massive scale the old fashioned way: buying it. By drawing on its nearly limitless access to the capital markets, Merck bought out dozens of its competitors:

https://mergr.com/merck-acquisitions

Anticapitalist investors funded these acquisitions in the expectation that Merck would be able to use its market dominance to pay suppliers less, charge customers more, and use some of the resulting windfall to corrupt and bully its regulators so that it could buy still more companies, charge still higher prices, and impose crushingly low prices on still more suppliers.

The IRA’s drug-bargaining provisions are extraordinarily weak. When they were first mooted in 2021, I talked about how Democrats were caving on muscular drug price controls that would benefit every American (except a handful of pharma shareholders):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/18/bipartisan-consensus/#corruption

They did so despite wild, bipartisan support for imposing price discipline on Big Pharma, and ending the 300% premium Americans pay for their drugs relative to their cousins abroad. 95% of Democrats support strong price controls; so do 82% of independents — and 71% of Republicans:

https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/research/2021/11/healthcare-affordability--majority-of-adults-support-significant-changes-to-the-health-system.html

No one believes Big Pharma’s scare stories about how this would kill R&D: 93% of Americans reject this idea, including 90% of Republicans. They’re right — nearly all US basic pharma R&D is directly funded by the federal government, with pharma companies privatizing the gains:

https://khn.org/news/article/public-opinion-prescription-drug-prices-democratic-plan/

Despite the fact that really whipping the shit out of Big Pharma would be both popular and good for America, the Dems’ final version of pharma bargaining is a barely-there nothingburger where ten drugs will become slightly cheaper, after the next federal election. This is called “political realism” and it’s a fantasy.

The idea that limiting drug controls to the faintest, most modest measures would make them easier to attain was obvious nonsense from the start, and Merck’s anticapitalist lawsuit proves it. Merck will settle for nothing less than total central planning — by Merck. For Merck, the role of the federal government is to wave through a stream of mergers culminating in Merck’s ownership of every major drug; patent extensions for these drugs to carry them into the 25th century and beyond, and unlimited sums paid for these drugs on Medicare.

Given all that, there would have been no downside to the Dems passing an IRA that subjected the drug companies the same modest, commensense, market-based discipline we see in Canada, or the UK, or France, or Germany, or Switzerland.

But that’s not the IRA we got. Instead of defending a big, visionary program in court, the Biden admin is facing down Jones Day and Merck to defend the most yawn-inducing, incrementalist half-measure. What a wasted opportunity.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/09/commissar-merck#price-giver

[Image ID: A caricature of a businessman with a money-bag for a head and a stickpin bearing the Merck logo, standing atop a pile of bundled $100 bills. At the bottom of the pile, a frowning, disheveled Uncle Sam offers up a $100 bill.]

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[vote-democrat-president-congress]

"In any election, it’s hard to know whose word to trust. And in a polarized country, many Americans distrust any information that comes from the other side of the political divide. That’s why the criticism of Donald Trump by those who served with him in the White House and by members of his own party is so striking. Dozens of people who know him well, including the 91 listed here, have raised alarms about his character and fitness for office — his family and friends, world leaders and business associates, his fellow conservatives and his political appointees — even though they had nothing to gain from doing so. Some have even spoken out at the expense of their own careers or political interests.

The New York Times editorial board has made its case that Mr. Trump is unfit to lead. But the strongest case against him may come from his own people. For those Americans who are still tempted to return him to the presidency or to not vote in November, it is worth considering the assessment of Mr. Trump by those who have seen him up close.

Administration insiders:

He will always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead …”

Bill Barr

He was extremely vulnerable to manipulation.”

Fiona Hill

… he was getting input from people who were calling him up, I don’t know who ...”

Anthony Fauci

… undermined American democracy baselessly …”

Thomas P. Bossert

He doesn’t take responsibility for the bad news …”

David Lapan

… says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.”

Elaine Chao

… equality and freedom can never be equated with white supremacists …”

Gary Cohn

His behavior had grown increasingly erratic and unnerving.”

Betsy DeVos

The F.B.I. is under attack by the president of the United States.”

Andrew McCabe

A person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators.”

John Kelly

Sometimes it’s just better to steer clear of him.”

Anthony Scaramucci

… I do regard him as a threat to democracy …”

Mark Esper

Trump’s temperament wasn’t rational …”

Cassidy Hutchinson

… doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie …”

Dan Coats

… he tries to divide us.”

James Mattis

… loyalty was mostly a one-way street.”

Cliff Sims

… I think he’s a terrible human being.”

Mick Mulvaney

… caused direct harm …”

Deborah Birx

… very little understanding of what it means to be in the military …”

Richard Spencer

… the most reckless and deadly piece of information I have ever heard.”

Rick Bright

Literally everything I’ve tried to do on cutting drug costs, you have killed it.”

Alex Azar

… played to Trump’s ego and insecurities with flattery.”

H.R. McMaster

… flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the Mob.”

James Comey

The turnover suggested instability and disorganization to our adversaries …”

Mike Pompeo

… renders coherent foreign policy almost unattainable.”

John Bolton

He is wholly unfit to be in office.”

Alyssa Farah Griffin

… a huge violation of your most important oath …”

Marc Short

He has built up a DNA of defensiveness.”

Sean Spicer

You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people …”

Mark Milley

… Anyone that puts themselves over the Constitution should never be president …”

Mike Pence

… not consistent with our national security objectives.”

Rex Tillerson

Trump relentlessly … puts forth claims that simply are not true.”

Ty Cobb

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality …”

Miles Taylor

Do you think Trump wants a guy to win after him?”

Steve Bannon

… He’s saying some crazy shit.”

Don McGahn

… They are loyal to no one.”

Stephanie Grisham

The Trumps & Trump Inc.

You can’t trust him.”

Maryanne Trump Barry

… a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully …”

Michael Cohen

‘I wanna do what I wanna do’ … ”

Fred Trump III

Trump does not have the temperament …”

Kwame Jackson

He pushed me up against the wall …”

Jill Harth

…actually a racist.”

Omarosa Manigault Newman

Honest work was never demanded of him …”

Mary L. Trump

… the competition reality show set about an American fraud …”

Bill Pruitt

… the hint of menace beneath the surface …”

Gwenda Blair

Our job was to make him look legitimate …”

Jonathon Braun

If you disagreed with Donald, he put you out of his inner circle.”

Randal Pinkett

Republican politicians

He is a coward.”

Dick Cheney

This man is a pathological liar.”

Ted Cruz

He's a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.”

Lindsey Graham

There is nothing ‘conservative’ about Donald Trump.”

Adam Kinzinger

The cheapest S.O.B. I’ve ever met in my life.”

Chris Christie

He’s not loyal.”

Justin Amash

He sought a coup by misleading people with lies.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger

… Power, revenge and retribution is his real motivation …”

Denver Riggleman

Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior …”

Jeff Flake

The healing of the Republican Party cannot begin with Trump as president …”

Geoff Duncan

… taking advantage of the trust placed in him by his supporters …”

John Boehner

He is a con artist.”

Marco Rubio

… a weakening of our shared American values …”

John Kasich

I think he’s toxic for the Republican Party and for the country.”

Larry Hogan

He’s willing to significantly undermine them …”

Bob Corker

There has never been a greater betrayal by a president …”

Liz Cheney

… an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories …”

Mitch McConnell

He should have immediately denounced the mob …”

Kevin McCarthy

… the most expensive and least effective way to do border security …”

Will Hurd

… not decency, not truth, not character, not integrity …”

Bill Weld

He tried to violently overthrow our government.”

Joe Walsh

… We shouldn’t have listened to him.”

Nikki Haley

… bitterness, combativeness and self-interest.”

Charlie Baker

Donald Trump is a phony, a fraud.”

Mitt Romney

… will spend the entire campaign whining about his legal troubles …”

Chris Sununu

… requires the kind of character he just doesn’t have.”

Paul Ryan

Conservative voices

He built a wall of lies …”

Charlie Sykes

If someone says something nice about him, they are our friend …”

Henry Kissinger

He wasn’t motivated by what he didn’t know.”

Hugh Hewitt

… corroded and corrupted American democracy …”

J. Michael Luttig

This is not leadership our country needs.”

Bob Vander Plaats

… We need a new standard-bearer.”

Erick Erickson

Lying is Trump’s toxic superpower.”

Rich Logis

… a floundering, inarticulate jumble of gnawing insecurities …”

George Will

Trump might be the greatest charlatan of them all.”

L. Brent Bozell III

World leaders

… I can't understand how Donald Trump can be on the side of Putin.”

Volodymyr Zelensky

A frightened dog barks louder.”

Kim Jong-un

… stands for a great division in the country.”

Olaf Scholz

… If there is a second time, it won’t be easy …”

Justin Trudeau

I deeply regret that President Trump has not conceded defeat …”

Angela Merkel

Where has our role model for democracy gone?”

Kazuyoshi Akaba

… clearly a threat.”

Christine Lagarde

… President Trump radiates insecurity.”

Kim Darroch

He’s a show-off.”

Mauricio Macri

[protoslacker]

You remember “Russia, if you’re listening” and the flood of social media disinformation. But you’ve never heard the strands of Putin’s attack on the 2016 election tied together like this.

lolgop at Ball of Thread on Apple Podcasts. 1 | By the nuts: Russia's attack on the 2016 election

After reading about the jury returning convicting Trump of 34 felony counts, I felt a bit shaky about how well I've pieced together a story in my own mind. I searched for "Don McGahn" a Republican FEC Commissioner who then became an attorney for Trump. Following the links, I was quickly in the weeds.

This Podcast isn't about Trump's trial and conviction. But it's really good at connecting the campaign finance crimes within the larger picture of corruption.

[mourning-again-in-america]

was trying to figure out how the hell Alina Habba ended up in TrumpWorld, looks like she went to the same law school as Don McGahn

[usnewsper-politics]

Judge Blocks Trump's Gag Order on McGahn, Protecting Constitutional Rights #DonMcGahn #GagOrder #housejudiciarycommittee #subpoena #Trumpadministration

[cavenewstimes]

Donald Trump's White House Counsel Has One Main Job—And He's Failing At It

Don McGahn in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York on January 9, 2017Albin Lohr-Jones/DPA through ZUMA Press Battle disinformation: Register for the complimentary Mom Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Donald McGahn, like all White House counsels who have actually served before him, has a broad portfolio however one basic charge: to keep his manager, the president of the…

[shahananasrin-blog]

[ad_1] WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump's top lawyer put it bluntly when speaking at a conservative conference five years ago: The goal was to name judges who would help further the administration's deregulation agenda."There is a coherent plan here where actually the judicial selection and the deregulatory effort are really the flip side of the same coin," White House counsel Don McGahn said onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2018.That plan is bearing fruit. The Supreme Court’s new nine-month term starts Monday, with three major cases shaped by Trump-appointed judges that could hobble federal agencies already on the docket.The process started when, among other things, prospective Trump nominees were probed about their views on federal agency authority as their records were scrutinized for expertise on the issue, something previous administrations had not done, McGahn said. He cited Justice Neil Gorsuch, then recently appointed to the Supreme Court, as an example of what the White House was looking for.Long after Trump has left office, his judges and justices are making their mark just as McGahn predicted, serving as participants, liberal critics say, in what Trump adviser Steve Bannon called the "deconstruction of the administrative state."In all three cases now before the Supreme Court, Trump-appointed judges were involved in lower court rulings that teed up the legal issues for Supreme Court review. The court’s conservative majority has repeatedly shown its willingness to limit bureaucratic authority.Brianne Gorod of the left-leaning Constitutional Accountability Center said there had been a "long-standing multifaceted conservative attack on the administrative state" that includes two elements.The first is to find suitable plaintiffs to bring the challenges.The second is to ensure there are "judges on the bench who will be receptive to those arguments,” she said.McGahn did not respond to messages seeking comment on how Trump’s approach has fared.Trump made judicial appointments a priority, with the acquiescence of the Republican-led Senate. He appointed 54 appeals court judges and 174 district court judges, as well as three Supreme Court justices. President Joe Biden, aided by a now Democratic-controlled Senate, has followed Trump's lead in trying to fill judicial vacancies as quickly as possible, with considerable success.The Supreme Court hears oral arguments Tuesday in the first of the three regulatory cases currently on the docket. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America threatens the federal agency that was established to protect consumers from unlawful financial services practices. At issue is whether the mechanism allowing the agency to be funded directly by the Federal Reserve instead of a specific congressional appropriation is unconstitutional.The challengers are represented by Noel Francisco, who served as solicitor general under Trump and, like McGahn, works for the Jones Day law firm. Francisco did not respond to a request for comment.In another case yet to be scheduled, Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarksey, the justices will consider whether to curb the power of the SEC to bring enforcement actions for securities violations.Finally, the court in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo will weigh whether to overturn a landmark ruling from 1984 that gave federal agencies leeway to interpret the law when the statute is not clear. It was Gorsuch's critique of that ruling, when serving as an appeals court judge, that helped put him on Trump's radar as a possible Supreme Court nominee.In both the CFPB and SEC cases, the Biden administration is appealing decisions against the government issued by conservative judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the Loper Bright case, which concerns a challenge to a fishing regulation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has a majority of Democratic appointees, ruled in favor of the government.In the CFPB case, all three judges — Don Willett, Kurt Engelhardt and Cory Wilson — were appointed by Trump. The decision against the agency was unanimous. Previously, District Court Judge Lee Yeakel, appointed by President George W. Bush, had ruled for the agency.The Jarksey decision, also by the 5th Circuit, included an all-Republican-appointee panel with one judge, Andrew Oldham, appointed by Trump. The other judges, Jennifer Elrod and Eugene Davis, were appointed by President George W. Bush and President Ronald Reagan, respectively. Davis dissented from the ruling that went against the agency. That case went directly to the appeals court, so there was no district court ruling.in Loper Bright, the appeals court was split 2-1 in ruling in favor of the agency. The majority consisted of Democratic appointees: Judge Sri Srinivasan, appointed by President Barack Obama, and Judge Judith Rogers, appointed by President Bill Clinton. The dissenter was a Trump appointee, Judge Justin Walker. The district court had ruled in favor of the agency in a decision issued by a Democratic appointee, Judge Emmet Sullivan.The 5th Circuit in particular, which has six Trump appointees among its 16 active judges, has a reputation as a favored place for conservative activists and Republicans to bring legal claims.The court includes judges who are "both extreme enough and aggressive enough to issue really kind of astonishing decisions," said Greg Lipper, a lawyer who filed a brief backing the CFPB.Jenn Mascott, a professor at George Mason University law school who filed a brief backing the challenge to the CFPB, pushed back on that assessment, saying that cases are shaped more by the people bringing them and their lawyers than the judges themselves."I really think it's the litigants shaping the claims. They decide what claims to bring. They face the action by the regulatory bodies," she said.There would not be so many cases taking aim at regulatory decisions if federal agencies were more restrained in wielding their power, she added."A lot of what we are seeing now is responding to the very broad actions taken by presidents and agencies under both parties," Mascott said. "I don’t think, no, that the process is particularly political."This article was originally published on NBCNews.com [ad_2]

[newswireml]

Donald Trump’s White House Counsel Has One Main Job—And He’s Failing At It – Mother Jones#Donald #Trumps #White #House #Counsel #Main #JobAnd #Hes #Failing #Mother #Jones

Donald Trump’s White House Counsel Has One Main Job—And He’s Failing At It – Mother Jones#Donald #Trumps #White #House #Counsel #Main #JobAnd #Hes #Failing #Mother #Jones

Don McGahn in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York on January 9, 2017Albin Lohr-Jones/DPA via ZUMA Press Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. Donald McGahn, like all White House counsels who have served before him, has a broad portfolio but one fundamental charge: to keep his boss, the president of the United States, out of…

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Former Trump White House Counsel Don McGahn will be among the lawyers representing Sen. Lindsey Graham in his effort to block a subpoena from a Georgia special grand jury investigating Donald Trump's behavior after losing the 2020 election, court records show.

The South Carolina Republican is among a slew of Trump allies subpoenaed since May by the Fulton County special grand jury, which has also heard from Georgia state officials who rebuffed the former-President's attempts to overturn the election.

Graham was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee when McGahn shepherded through the nominations of Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Graham later chaired the Committee. McGahn now works for the law firm Jones Day, where he "advises clients on high-stakes matters that require navigating and challenging assertions of government authority," according to his company biography.

A spokesperson for Jones Day did not return a request for comment.

Graham originally challenged the subpoena in federal court in South Carolina, but that motion was quickly dismissed after attorneys for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued Georgia is the proper jurisdiction. Graham's subpoena calls for him to testify in August, and Judge Leigh Martin May has set an expedited schedule, requiring both sides to file arguments this week.

Prosecutors alleged in Graham's subpoena that he spoke to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after the 2020 election and questioned him "about reexamining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome" for Trump.

President Joe Biden won Georgia by just under 12,000 votes, or 0.5%. Graham has acknowledged the phone calls in the past and dismissed any allegations of wrongdoing, telling "Face the Nation" in January that he "asked about how the system worked when it came to mail-in voting, balloting."

Graham's attorneys argued in their motion that he was performing "legislative acts" in inquiring about the election.

"In making these calls, after the election, Senator Graham was engaged in quintessentially legislative factfinding—both to help him form election-related legislation, including in his role as then-Chair of the Judiciary Committee, and to help inform his vote to certify the election," they wrote.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Just a few tidbits before McGahn testifies tomorrow!  It’s all coming out now.

[not-safe-for-democracy]