Cory Booker, Tom Price & Big Pharma

For decades now I have been saying that there was no difference between Republicans and Democrats and with the election of Donald Trump, no time since now has this even more clear. Sure folk will say that Trump is a Republican, but I dare anyone to show any ideological bent he has toward either party.  If he is a Republican, then Bernie Sanders is a Democrat.  But a more articulate example of this can be observed when one tries to make a distinction between the actions and policies of traditional partisans like Cory Booker and Tom Price.

For cats attentive to history, we must recall we have Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to thank for our modern day derivative of what are now considered Republicans and Democrats. Both these men founded the Democratic-Republican Party. It was founded by these men to serve as a challenge to the Federalist Party which was run by Alexander Hamilton in 1791.  Hamilton at the time was Secretary of the Treasury and a significant player in the administration in America’s first President George Washington.

Madison and Jefferson questioned Hamilton’s interest in truly wanting America to be a republic since he sided with the concept of federalism and disapproved of the manner in which the Constitution was written to limit the government and not the people. In contrast, Jefferson and Madison claimed the Constitution gave the federal government too much power such that it might place the citizenry at risk of being oppressed if there was no Bill of Rights to guarantee individual liberty. As an outcome of this, the first two U.S. political parties were formed – the Federalist Party (Hamilton) and the Democratic-Republican Party (Jefferson).

These two parties did not last too long and by the twentieth century, there was just one party divided in half – the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Both of which have decided their main objective is not to serve on behalf of the unalienable individual rights of the citizen but rather the mechanical apparatus of the national government . Moreover, instead of the business of the people, their goals, motivated by political avarice motioned toward personal enrichment by becoming a professional class – something the founding fathers feared when they desired citizen merchants to serve and eventually return to the community.

Seeing this truism in modern day partisan politics, there is no better example than the relationship between Tom Price and Cory Booker with big pharma. The record is clear on both these politicians and their relationship with large U.S. pharmaceutical giants. Price was the benefactor of large campaign contributions from a CEO whose company manufactured a drug with the shelf name of BiDil - A treatment for African Americans suffering from heart failure, although one study raised problems about its safety and effectiveness. Add to this, the recent.  Kaiser Health report that Price invested in an Australian biotech company named Zimmer Biomet which resulted for him a profit gain of more than 400 percent and may be even more profitable for the company with the enacting of the 21st Century Cures legislation Price supported. Likewise Sen. Cory Booker and 12 other democrat senators supported the same legislation which serves to lower drug safety standards. Booker also votedagainst the Sanders/Klobuchar amendment which would have allowed for the importation of pharmaceuticals from Canada and aided sugificantly in reducing the unreasonable and exploitive price gauging currently practiced by U.S. Pharmaceutical giants. Booker did this while remaining one of the biggest recipients of pharma, receiving contributions in excess of with $260,000.  Is there a difference between these two politicians although one is a republican and the other a democrat?

Well to answer this we have to beat the bushes a little more. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican nominated by Donald Trump to become head of the Department of Health and Human Services, received additional contributions from the CEO of Atlanta based Arbor Pharmaceuticals LLC who bought the rights to BiDil.  In return he sought to have the aforementioned study questioning the drug safety and effectiveness removed from the federal government website.   It was effective.  Emails show that an assistant to Price contacted the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality multiple times regarding having the study taken off their website according to documents obtained by ProPublica. It should be noted that Arbor is headquartered in Price’s district.

Similar to Price, Booker too seems to be in the pocket of big Pharma. He demonstrated his true colors (green and white) when he visibly stood in opposition to a Senate amendment allowing for the importation of pharmaceuticals into the U.S. that would have lowered the absurd cost for drugs that is a major economic burden on millions in the U.S. Considered to be a potential 2020 presidential contender, Booker’s office issued a statement saying that he was in favor of the importation of prescription drugs but that “any plan to allow the importation of prescription medications should also include consumer protections that ensure foreign drugs meet American safety standards. I opposed an amendment put forward last night that didn’t meet this test.” This alone is questionable and goes against attempting to aid the tens of millions of U.S. Citizens struggling to deal with the exorbitant cost of prescription drugs because it is the same argument made by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and the Obama Administration prior. Not to mention that Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden amendment to the Sanders/Klobuchar legislation included a clause for verified safety certification.

So is there a difference between Republicans and Democrats on ideology?  Would say no and that the Democratic-Republican Party established by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison are mirror images of each other and represent a professional class that have the singular objective to enrich themselves at the expense of the American people. 

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America’s Racist Baggage Today is the Legacy of the Democratic Party

It is very difficult for me to understand how inefficient the knowledge base of a sizeable corpus of individuals in the generations after mine have, as it pertains to history.  No more astonishing a content area is this evident is with regards to American political history, in particular history of the Democratic Party. What few are aware of is that it is most probable that race relations in America are a direct result of Democratic Party policy and ideology. De Tocqueville acknowledge this when he stated that a natural prejudice was evinced against Africans brought to these shores against their will yet forever through pigmentation, will carry the “external mark” of a stranger, born in degradation considered as “an intermediate between beast and man.” Taking this even further he wrote:

“So those who hope that the European will one day mingle with the Negroes seem to me to be harboring a delusion…I see that slavery is in retreat, but the prejudice from which it arose is immovable…Race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exist, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known.”

Ironically the laws that would manifest over his times and major attitudes regarding Africans in America, After the Federalist Party, would be fostered by one party in particular as it pertained to policy – the Democratic Party.

That is correct; you name it, many of the collective political accomplishments that we as African Americans benefited from did not occur because of the Democratic Party but rather in spite of the Democratic Party.  If it were not for U.S. Representative Justin Morrill (R-VT) in 1862, who got the Land Grant Act passed, which established colleges for African Americans, there would be no state funded historically Black Colleges and Universities. Even before this, the historical record notes that the Republican Party was formed essential to counteract the pro-slavery policies of the Democratic Party during a period in the nation’s history in which we saw Democratic President Franklin Pierce signing the Kansas-NebraskaAct (which allowed for the expansion of slavery into newly acquired U.S. territories in 1854). Ironically the same year, Montgomery Blair, a republican argued in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of his client Dred Scott albeit it unsuccessfully where the record noted the only dissent with the court decision majority of seven democrats was Republican Justice John McLean.

Although many incorrectly believe that freed slaves were promised after emancipation and the 13^th and 14^th amendment 40 acres and a mule, this was never factually the case.  The record documents that in 1866 Republican U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens introduced the legislation however it was vetoed by then Democratic President Andrew Johnson. Also that same year the Republican congress was able to override President Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and his veto of the Freedman’s Bureau Act which was written to protect former slaves from Black codes put into law to deny rights granted by the 13th and 14^th amendments. In addition, two times the following year, the Republican majority had to vote to over-ride Johnson’s veto of the legislation granting African Americans the right to vote.

Being unable to compete with the Republicans in the Federal legislatures, the Democratic Party, in particular southern democrats whom were former confederate veterans found the “Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee, on December 24, 1865.  To be accurate, the Ku Klux Klan was founded and formed to be the military wing of the Democratic Party and actions around the nation after its inception until this very day still supports this objective. KKK violence was aimed specifically intimidate and kill newly freed slaves and Republicans.  For example, in September of 1868 Democrats in Louisiana murdered around 300 African Americans whom attempted to defend their assault against a Republican Newspaper editor. The following month, while campaigning for re-election, Republican U.S. House Representative James Hinds was assassinated by self-proclaimed Democrats and KKK members.

Now I know many would say that this was decades ago and I would agree, but what must not be forgotten is that the plan desired (in concert with democrats) was to construt and put in place policy designed to disenfranchise and keep blacks from owing land and in a position to sustain ourselves. Moreover they wanted to defeat and keep Republicans equally at bay via terrorism.  With the use of violence by the Party’s military wing (the KKK) and separating blacks from their land and placing them in positions not being able to provide for themselves, they formulated new policy at the federal level designed to make blacks dependent on democrats and the government as opposed to truly exercising inalienable rights associated with actual liberty.

Republicans fought back with policy. In 1871 the Republican congress passed the Ku Klux Klan act which outlawed the Democratic Party military wing. Republican President even dispatched troops to South Carolina after democrats threated blacks with death around the nation for even trying to vote.  In one case, African American Republican activist Octavius Catto was murdered by democrats in Philadelphia. A few years later in 1874, nearly 30 were killed when democrats took control of the Louisiana state house because Republican Gov. William Kellogg dared to have an integrated administration.

When democrats returned to leadership, all of what had been put in place by Republicans was obviated.  It was the democratic congress and President Grover Cleveland who repealed the Republicans Enforcement Act which gave African Americans the right to vote. Two years later America would see a Democratic Supreme Court uphold Plessy V. Ferguson. In 1901, Booker T. Washington would begin his life long battle protesting against the Alabama’s Democratic Party refusal to allow African Americans to vote.

Even during the time of Franklin Roosevelt democratic policy was moving more towards the views of dependency politics advocated by the KKK in an effort to form a dependency class of Americans based on color alone.  In 1937 it was the Republicans who organized against FDR’s appointment of Ku Klux Klan member Senator Hugo Black to theSupreme Court and it was Democrat FDR, whom just three years later rejected the Republican Party’s call to integrate the armed forces.

In 1953 California’s Three-term Republican Governor Earl Warren wrote the land mark decision for Brown V. Board of Education after Assistant Attorney General of the Eisenhower administration Lee ranking argued the case on behalf of the Plaintiffs with Thurgood Marshall.  On a roll it seemed, a Republican Federal judge, under threats from Democrats the blacks in the back of the bus law and ruled in favor of Rosa Parks.

But as history outlines, democrats fought tooth and nail against all of these outcomes. After Eisenhower signed the Republican’s Party Civil Rights Act into law, he had to send the 82^nd airborne division to Little Rock to enforce school desegregation amidst criticism from Democrats the likes of Future Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in 1957.

In simple terms, the legacy of racism that has it’s weighted and oppressive foot on the collective necks of African Americans today was the courtesy of the Democratic party and democratic policy that continues to day with violence in the form of police brutality and disenfranchisement via policies of dependency.  Andrew Hacker explained this in his 1992 tractate Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal. He noted that as African Americans, we must live in an existence that is far removed from free-will and free-choice. He wrote “Black Americans are Americans, yet they still subsist as aliens in the only land they know. Other groups may remain outside the mainstream but the do so voluntarily. In contrast blacks must endure a segregation that is far from freely chosen.”

The reality is, how America and Americans views race presently is a direct result of beliefs of a perverted democratic system that proffers race as its central element of contention.  This contention is, when violence was no longer acceptable after the civil rights era, was transduced to policy designed with the intent to subjugate African Americans and systematically extract wealth from our community. As a policy this has never stopped.  The most lucid view of this is the large urban cities of America.  Cleveland has been run by democrats from 1942-present (police, city council and mayor) uninterrupted with the exception of  1972-77; Chicago has been run by democratsuninterrupted since 1931; Flint, MI since 1960; Detroit since 1962; Baltimoresince 1967; DC since 1967; Philadelphia since 1952; Newark since 1953; and Milwaukee since 1960. And I would reckon if II had the time to look up a few things, I could find trend lines over the same period that would show an increase in poverty, unemployment, incarceration, high school dropout rates and poverty as well as decline in wealth, land ownership, housing and income too.

This is our biggest problem as a voting block today - Democrats running for state or national office aspiring to win black votes without appearing to give a FcK about nothing but our vote. So if we so upset about our current circumstances and conditions, why we still voting to enslave and impoverish ourselves by voting for democrats unconditionally? They gave us the politics of bigotry and oppression that is killing us currently.

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