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howard dean
'Cartoon Villain Stuff': Howard Dean Urges Biden to Oppose Lifting Covid Vaccine Patents
Dean currently works in the lobbying division at Dentons, a law firm that has represented Pfizer and other industry giants.
Apr 08, 2021
Former Vermont governor and erstwhile Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is publicly urging President Joe Biden to oppose a South Africa- and India-led effort to temporarily lift coronavirus vaccine patents, a move that would help facilitate broad-based generic production of vaccines for developing nations.
In an op-ed for Barron's last month, Dean--who currently works in the lobbying division of the global law firm Dentons--claimed that India's sponsorship of the proposed intellectual property waiver is nothing more than a "thinly veiled attempt to boost its drug industry" and argued that "President Biden would be wise to reject it."
"Suspending IP protections won't speed up Covid-19 vaccine production," Dean declared. "Every drug manufacturing facility on the planet that's capable of churning out Covid-19 shots is already doing so."
But as The Intercept's Lee Fang noted Thursday, "Dean's claim that global vaccine manufacturing is already at capacity is patently false."
"Foreign firms have lined up to offer pharmaceutical plants to produce vaccines but have been forced to enter into lengthy negotiations under terms set by the intellectual property owners," Fang wrote. "The waiver, however, would allow generic drug producers to begin copying the vaccine without delay."
The Associated Pressreported last month that on three continents, it found factories "whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of Covid-19 vaccines on short notice if only they had the blueprints and technical know-how."
Previously a supporter of single-payer healthcare, Dean was considered a "progressive outsider" when he contended for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. But Dean has dramatically changed his tune since joining Dentons, a global law firm that has done work on behalf of corporations in a variety of industries, including healthcare.
"Dentons touts its work on drug intellectual property issues, noting on its website that it has represented Pfizer and other firms in the recent past," Fang pointed out. "[Dean's] official role is as a senior advisor to its government affairs practice focused on corporate healthcare clients, though as The Intercept has previously reported, he engages in almost every lobbying activity imaginable."
First introduced at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in October, South Africa and India's patent waiver proposal has since garnered the support of more than a 100 countries, hundreds of progressive advocacy organizations, U.S. members of Congress, Nobel Prize-winning economists, and the head of the World Health Organization. Predictably, the pharmaceutical industry has lobbied against the waiver.
Because the WTO operates on consensus, a small number of rich nations--including the U.S., the U.K., and members of the European Union--have been able to block the proposal, leaving large pharmaceutical companies in control of vaccine production and denying the recipes to low-income nations.
At the current rate of vaccine production and distribution, experts fear that most poor nations could take until 2024 to achieve mass inoculation against Covid-19, a delay that could allow vaccine-resistant variants to emerge and spread widely.
As Common Dreams reported last week, U.S. President Biden is now considering whether to back the patent waiver as a growing number of congressional Democrats voice support for the idea.
"The waiver is supported by over 100 countries and being opposed by only a handful of rich countries," Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) wrote in a Medium post last month. "The world needs as much vaccine manufacturing capacity as it can get. Time is of the essence."
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No, Dr. Dean, Democrats Do Need to Fight It Out
While he was bowing out of the contest to head up the Democratic National Party, Howard Dean said the election of the next chair should not become a fight between Hillary supporters and Bernie supporters.
With all due respect to Dr. Dean, the selection of the next chair is all about resolving that fight.
Dec 04, 2016
While he was bowing out of the contest to head up the Democratic National Party, Howard Dean said the election of the next chair should not become a fight between Hillary supporters and Bernie supporters.
With all due respect to Dr. Dean, the selection of the next chair is all about resolving that fight.
In fact, Democrats' fortunes have been declining for three decades now, precisely because the Party's neoliberal elite have done everything they can to stave off the battle.
And the costs to the Party and the people have been devastating.
What Neoliberalism has done to the Party. What folks haven't picked up on yet, is that this commitment to neoliberalism has been eroding the Party's prospects for more than three decades. For example, back in the 60's, half of all potential voters in the US identified as Democrats. Currently, 29% do. If one tracks the losses, it appears that the more the Party moved to the center and beyond, the more the people abandoned the Party.
Republicans now control both Houses of Congress, and the Presidency. In fact, since 1980, the nation has had three conservative Republican Presidents and one middle of the road Democrat, and one who was conservative in deed, if not in language. And now Trump.
At the state level, the situation is even more skewed. Republicans control both legislatures and the governorship in 25 states, while Democrats control all three institutions in just 6 states. Nebraska, which has a unicameral, non-partisan legislature, isn't counted in this total.
Republicans control both legislative bodies in 32 states while Democrats do in just 13. And they're picking up momentum. In 1978, Democrats controlled both legislative branches in 31 states, while Republicans had majorities in only 11.
Currently 34 states have a Republican governor, while only 15 are headed by a Democrat, and one - Alaska - is headed by an Independent.
What Neoliberalism has done to the people. The US now ranks about the same as such luminaries as Cameroon, Uganda and Rwanda in measures of income inequality, and Americans are increasingly trapped in this pathetic state - income mobility in the US lags behind most other developed nations.
"Neoliberalism and Republican orthodoxy have literally ripped money and wealth out of the hands of low income and middle-class Americans and given it to the uber rich."How did this happen?
Well, there's a remarkable overlap between the neoliberals' dogma - tax cuts are always good; privatization is better; deregulation is great; and trade agreements and the free movement of capital are wonderful - and the Republican's destructive economic myths -- supply side-job creators, tickle down economics, and deregulation. The thing is, these ideas have never worked, but they've been harder to kill than a zombie vampire black cat in a coal mine at midnight. Nine lives? That's for pikers. These myths have survived so many run-ins with reality it's beyond astounding.
Neoliberalism and Republican orthodoxy have literally ripped money and wealth out of the hands of low income and middle-class Americans and given it to the uber rich.
The reason these destructive myths survive is because they're rarely confronted, and that's because the neoliberal Democrats essentially buy into the conservative's myths. Oh, the rhetoric is different, particularly around election time. And the Parties differ on social issues. But at the end of the day, Democrats' embrace of neoliberalism, with its laissez-faire, market uber-alles policies closely mirrors conservative dogma.
Doubt that? The fact is, Bill Clinton and his DLC crowd accomplished more for the conservative cause than Reagan did.
As Thomas Frank noted in an interview with Mark Carlin recently:
Clinton had five major achievements as president: NAFTA, the Crime Bill of 1994, welfare reform, the deregulation of banks and telecoms, and the balanced budget. All of them -- every single one -- were longstanding Republican objectives.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996, in particular, was a free marketeer's wet dream. Not only did it give away airwaves for free, but it also removed the few remaining meaningful constraints on the media designed to assure that it met its First Amendment responsibilities.
The Democrats had a choice in this election: go with Hillary Clinton - a neoliberal in good standing - or Bernie Sanders, a progressive populist who called the neoliberal and conservative dogma what it is: a rigged system.
They chose wrong, and the DNC - which supported Clinton and worked to undermine Sanders -- was a big reason they did.
Neoliberals are chasing the mythical center - and losing. The justification for moving to the center (and often well beyond to the right of center) by the neoliberals is ostensibly to capture the independent swing voters. In reality, swing voters have always been a small portion of the independent voter bloc. Since 1960 they've comprised at most only 15% of self-identified independents, and currently they make up about 5% of independents. It turns out, more independents lean left, which suggests the growth in independents comes, at least in part, from disaffected progressives leaving the Democratic Party.
The reality is, the vast majority of Americans are politically left of center on an issue-by-issue basis, and they have been for some time, and the Democratic Party has abandoned them.
That showed up in spades this election.
"If the Democrats continue to embrace neoliberalism, they will continue to lose."
Trumps' use of trade agreements and job loss during the campaign shows why his victory was as much about what the neoliberal Democrats and the DNC failed to do, as it was about appeals to racism, jingoism, or any of the other "isms" we're reading about in the pundit's post-election ruminations.
On Thursday, Trump delivered - at least partially -- on his promise to the Carrier workers even before he was elected, saving 1000 of the 2100 jobs at risk in two factories. As Sanders pointed out, it was a costly "victory" that essentially made it open season for any corporation wanting to extract tax cuts from the government. Carrier walks away with $7 million in tax breaks, and this runs the risk of becoming our de facto policy on job retention.
Trump won for two reasons. First, because the DLC Democrats, in thrall to the neoliberal consensus, had been silent on the issue for decades. And that included Obama and Hillary. While Trump and Sanders talked about jobs and trade, what did you hear from the DLC Dems? Crickets. And second, because the DNC made sure the candidate talking about jobs didn't get the nomination.
The Nightmare Scenario if Neoliberalism isn't confronted. Thanks to the Carrier agreement we now have Trump, the savior of jobs. Meanwhile, manufacturing jobs increased five years in a row under Obama before flat-lining the last two years. It should be noted those are new jobs, not saved jobs. Moreover, the stimulus program and the auto bailout are credited with saving or creating more than 3.5 million jobs. And economic indicators suggest domestic manufacturing is poised to continue strong growth in the future despite the strong dollar.
With Carrier, Trump has just scored a PR victory, and he's inheriting a strong economy that created manufacturing jobs at a near record pace for 5 of the last 7 years and looks like it's about to take off again.
So here's the bottom line, Dr. Dean. If the Democrats continue to embrace neoliberalism, they will continue to lose. Worse, Trump would likely be a two-term President with complete control of Congress and the Supreme Court. Imagine what this would mean for climate change policy; or the cause of science; or the place that reason, tolerance, equity and justice have in our society ...
In the 2004 presidential primary race, Dean asked why anyone would vote for Republican-lite when they could have the real thing. Well, the answer has come in.
Yes, Dr. Dean, the Party - and the country - need to have this battle. The alternative is watching a reactionary populist walk off with the voters who could, should, and would embrace a progressive agenda and a progressive Democratic Party.
Bottom line: in the end, Trump didn't win - the Democrats lost, and they lost because they became the Party of the Oligarchy, not the Party of the people. That has to change.
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Vying for DNC Chair, Howard Dean Praises Wall Street Bailout Architect
Hank Paulson, former Goldman Sachs exec who secured Wall Street bailout deal as Treasury Secretary under Bush, remembered fondly for holding it all "together" in 2008
Nov 30, 2016
Everyone has their version of history.
Even as he vies to reclaim his position to head the battered Democratic National Committee, former governor of Vermont Howard Dean on Wednesday morning went out of his way to praise Hank Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs executive who served as Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush during the financial crash of 2008.
While discussing Donald Trump's newly announced nominee for Treasury--another Goldman Sachs alumnus Steven Mnuchin known for his penchant for predatory foreclosures--Dean wondered if the latest Wall Street insider tapped to lead the Treasury Department would be seen as the same kind of respectable "heavy hitter" as Paulson.
"You can say a lot of bad things about Hank Paulson," Dean said on MSNBC's Morning Joe, "but Hank Paulson was one of the people who kept the show together while the country and the world was falling apart."
Watch:
\u201chttps://t.co/kTkPGUOlwT\u201d— Jon Queally (@Jon Queally) 1480514183
During an infamous scene that took place during the congressional battle to bail out the nation's big banks in 2008 as the collapse took hold, Paulson made headlines around the world for kneeling before then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) as he begged for taxpayer funds that would save the crumbling financial sector.
As Rolling Stone journalist Tim Dickinson later wrote, "Crony capitalism isn't usually this bald. But then again, this is Hank Paulson we're talking about." In that 2011 article, Dickinson details just how dastardly a process it was when Paulson, as Dean phrases it, was keeping it all "together":
With the passage of the massive TARP bailout that Ocotober 2008, Paulson gained unprecedented command over the American economy, and he decided to inject hundreds of billions of bailout dollars into the nation's banks. At the time, Paulson assured his fellow Americans that the government would be receiving valuable assets exchange for the flood of liquidity: "This is an investment, not an expenditure," he said.
This was a baldfaced lie. Paulson required all banks, even those with relatively healthy balance sheets to participate in TARP. And he gave every bank a sweetheart deal. For every $100 in bailout funds handed over to healthy banks, the American taxpayer received just $78 worth of assets, according to a report by the Congressional Oversight Panel (COP) chaired by Elizabeth Warren. The exchange rate for struggling banks was $44 for every 100 taxpayer dollars.
All in, COP reported, Treasury paid $254 billion, for assets worth just $176 billion -- a stealth bailout of $78 billion to the financial sector never approved by Congress, including a cool $2.5 billion for Paulson's cronies at Goldman.
Meanwhile, one of Dean's rivals for the DNC chair is Congressman Keith Ellison of Minnesota who has received the backing of prominent progressives like Bernie Sanders and is on record repeatedly criticizing the influence of Wall Street and advocating reforms to curtail their power both in Washington, D.C. and within the Democratic Party. Ellison has a different take on Paulson's role in the crisis--in 2008, he openly criticized Paulson for his handling of the economic meltdown and for misleading congress on the bailout.
In promoting his case to be the next chair of the DNC, Ellison has specifically argued the party must acknowledge its failure to address the concerns of working people and break free from the perception--backed by much evidence--that Democrats have become too reliant on, and subservient to, corporate interests and the financial elite. Blasting Trump's economic vision, including key appointments to his cabinet, Ellison recently noted how the Trump team is full of "lobbyists and big-time investment bankers," a clear betrayal of the frequent populist rhetoric he espoused during his campaign.
"He's not doing what he's said he's gonna do for average working Americans," Ellison said.
In their recent endorsement of Ellison, the Communication Workers of America said he is the best choice to lead the DNC in the wake of crushing defeats suffered by Democrats this year at the ballot box.
"Ellison supports the economic policies that are critical to addressing the needs of millions of Americans who have been left out and left behind by unfair trade deals and trickle-down austerity economics," the CWA declared.
What Trump's election has proved, the union continued, is that millions of "Americans fell for the siren call of phony, right-wing populism." But Ellison, the CWA concluded, "understands that in order to win these voters back, the Democratic Party must clearly embrace its historic core values of racial and economic justice."
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