August 16, 2024 ❧ Kamala's price gouging plan, middlemen killing Alabama pharmacies, and new elections in Venezuela?

Plus: The wonders and horrors of “Grok,” Liz Truss gets ambushed with lettuce, and frogs and tarantulas are friends 

Can you feel the news tonight?

CROOKS vs. SICKOS (Or, “What’s going on with our politicians and oligarchs?”)

❧ Kamala Harris has announced another new policy plank, to be unveiled today: a plan to combat corporate price gouging on groceries. Grocery prices shot up by 20 percent over the first two years of the Biden administration. And while price growth has slowed back to normal rates over the past year, American families are still feeling the pinch, spending the greatest percentage of their household budgets on food in three decades, according to the Department of Agriculture. 

Lots of factors have contributed to price inflation—including supply chain shortages, the war in Ukraine, and post-COVID demand spikes due to the strong labor market. But corporations also used the expectation of inflation to artificially jack up prices further and reap record profits. A study by the International Monetary Fund (who aren’t exactly hardened commies) found that “profits” were the single largest driver of inflation, explaining 45 percent of it across the Eurozone in 2022. Fortune Magazine, meanwhile, has covered a few more recent studies, including a sample of more than 1,300 companies, which found that corporate profits across some of the world’s largest economies outpaced inflation threefold. Another found that the majority of 2023’s inflation surge was caused by “greedflation.”

“Simply put, business leaders ratchet up prices because they can,” wrote Forbes magazine last year. This is probably going to get even worse, now that grocery stores are experimenting with electronic price tags that allow them to engage in “dynamic pricing,” by which they could “surge pricing for water or ice cream when it's hot out,” as Senator Elizabeth Warren recently warned.

Some of the worst “greedflation” offenders. (Graphic: Time Magazine)

Harris laid out the broad strokes of her economic plan during a speech on Friday. Right now, details are light, but she mentioned that it would include the “first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food and groceries” to ensure that companies “can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive profits.” Harris did not define what exactly constituted “price gouging” or “excessive” profits, but she did say that the Federal Trade Commission would “impose strict new penalties on companies that break the rules.”

It sounds as if Harris might be considering bringing back a long-abandoned tool for fighting inflation…*insert dramatic thunderclap here*... price controls.

This idea tends to give economists heart palpitations, and conservatives have already begun labeling the policy “communism.” (Which is only true if you consider Richard Nixon to be a communist). But economics writer Harold Meyerson pointed out in a 2022 American Prospect article that, “Contrary to what economic orthodoxy would have us believe, such controls have been markedly successful at various times in our nation’s history,” particularly during World Wars I and II. Eric Levitz, in New York Magazine, has pointed out that rent controls have not caused the predicted supply shortages for housing in states where they’ve been introduced. So the idea at least deserves to be taken seriously.

We should, of course, temper our expectations until we learn more. After all, since moving into the spotlight, Harris has been disavowing lots of her previous progressive stances one-by-one, including Medicare for All, a ban on fracking, and a federal jobs guarantee. She has adopted Trump’s lackluster “no-tax-on-tips” policy (which we covered in Tuesday’s briefing), but according to the New York Times, “is not expected anytime soon to say how high the minimum wage should be raised,” which is a much more important policy for workers. However, if Harris is actually willing to rein in corporate profiteering with government penalties, that would be a major step in the right direction that could ease some stress on Americans’ pocketbooks.

In other news…

• Following conditions laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare officials have finished negotiating the prices for ten drugs selected last year by the Department of Health and Human Services. The negotiations have resulted in some significant decreases to the costs of major drugs, which are estimated to save beneficiaries a total of $1.5 billion in out-of-pocket costs. That’s a significant achievement. Though considering that access to these drugs can be a matter of life and death, these prices are still quite obscene. If only there were a solution that might be able to reduce them further. (Politico)

(Chart from Politico)

• Rep. Ilhan Omar won her primary in Minnesota, defeating challenger Don Samuels by a larger margin than his last attempt in 2022. Notably, AIPAC did not spend millions of dollars on this race (although other pro-Israel groups did make donations), which only strengthens the case that AIPAC’s involvement was a decisive factor in the earlier losses of Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, Omar’s fellow “Squad” members. (Minnesota Reformer)
  
  
• Donald Trump might actually have PTSD from the failed assassination attempt against him in July. According to one anonymous Republican, he’s been “watching that seven-second clip of how close he was to getting shot right in the head—over and over and over again.” (Newsweek)

Notice how Trump doesn’t look thrilled to see this assassination-themed Tesla Cybertruck? 

(Image: Adin Ross via Kick)

• Before you feel too sorry for Trump, though, his campaign has also doubled down on being enormously racist, with an official account tweeting “Import the third world / Become the third world” on Tuesday. (Huffington Post)

• The Democratic National Convention begins next week in Chicago and anti-war organizers are promising “the largest [pro-Palestine] protest in the history” of the city in an effort to push the party to finally achieve a ceasefire. Cook County, where Chicago is located, is home to the largest Palestinian population in the United States. (Block Club Chicago)
  
  
• The Democrats would be wise to listen to the protesters, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it would likely help them win the election. Prem Thakker writes for Zeteo about a new poll of swing state voters from YouGov:

The results were particularly stark when looking at responses by those who voted for Biden in 2020 and are currently undecided. In Pennsylvania, 57% of such voters said they’d be more likely to support the Democratic nominee if they pledged to withhold additional weapons to Israel for committing human rights abuses; in Arizona, 44% said the same; in Georgia, 34% said so.

• In other DNC news, the City of Chicago is also carrying out a crackdown on homeless encampments before the convention arrives. They wouldn’t want politicians to have to see poor people, after all. (CBS)
  
  
• LONG READ: Donald Trump wants to invade Mexico to fight drug cartels without the consent of the Mexican government. For the Watch, Radley Balko breaks down why that policy would be a horrifying disaster that not only won’t achieve its stated goals but will cause devastating economic and humanitarian consequences.

HEADLINE OF THE WEEK

Courtesy of the U.K.’s most boring/horniest conservative magazine, the Spectator:

The author, Philip Patrick, dismays at the Japanese city’s decision to exclude ambassadors from Israel from the solemn ceremony honoring the victims of the atomic bombing, saying that the introduction of “politics” have meant that “memorials to the A-bomb victims have been overshadowed.” (As if slaughtering more than 150,000 people to get better negotiating terms at the end of a war is somehow apolitical!)

But additionally, if anything would “overshadow” the solemnity of the ceremony, it’s probably the presence of a country that is currently inflicting another genocidal bombing campaign, and which dropped more than two nuclear bombs worth of destructive power on Gaza within just over a month.  

AROUND THE STATES

❧ Alabama has lost 300 of its 800 independent pharmacies. In a recent article for Birmingham’s ABC 33/40 News, local journalist Austin Pratt writes that the decline has been going on for the past six years, thanks largely to the business practices of “Pharmacy Benefit Managers.” 

Essentially, PBMs are middlemen in the United States’ for-profit healthcare system. They exist to negotiate the price of prescription drugs between insurance plans and the pharmacies who actually provide the medication, serving as a kind of messenger or facilitator between the two parties. But because capitalist healthcare systems are inherently corrupt and exploitative, this also means they skim money off the top for their own pockets.

The technical term for this is “spread pricing,” which the industry journal Pharmaceutical Commerce describes as “a practice where PBMs charge payers, such as a health plan, a higher price for medications than what they pay to pharmacies, keeping the difference or ‘spread’ as profit.” That’s a fairly bland description, but the implication is a nasty one. When a PBM gets involved, everyone else tends to lose out on the deal: the patient who needs the medicine pays a higher price than they otherwise would, and the pharmacy often receives less than it needs to cover its own expenses. As Pratt puts it:

For example, the [diabetes] drug Mounjaro costs around $1,000 to supply plus any costs to store it and fill prescriptions, but pharmacies sometimes only get reimbursed around $850 from PBMs. This is the case for many big name brand drugs.

It isn’t just Alabama pharmacies that have been hollowed out by “spread pricing,” either. In fact, the National Community Pharmacists Association has warned that “nearly a third” of independent pharmacies may be at risk of closing nationwide, as a direct result of “plunging prescription reimbursements by big insurance plans and their pharmacy benefit managers.”

Even Indiana's iconic Butt Drugs, founded by William H. Butt in 1952, was forced to close in 2023, with proprietor Kate Butt saying that “More and more prescriptions are filled where we are reimbursed less than what we pay for the medications from the wholesaler” and “More than 50% of all prescriptions go out the door at a loss, and this has been a trend in pharmacy that has exacerbated over the last five years.” That seems to be the pattern everywhere.

Look what capitalism took from you. (Image: TripAdvisor)

In Alabama, local pharmacists are warning that “independent pharmacy will disappear within 5 years in Alabama” if the state legislature doesn’t pass HB 238, better known as the Fair Meds Act. That bill, currently being hotly debated, would require PBMs to at least pay pharmacies the basic cost of the meds involved in each transaction, prohibiting undercuts. Several other states already have similar laws, and they’re a good start—but also not nearly enough. When these retailers close, it can create “pharmacy deserts” where people can’t get their medications at all without driving long distances, similar to “food deserts.” 

This is a genuine crisis, and it needs serious, nationwide political action. We need a universal, not-for-profit healthcare system like Britain’s or Canada’s—for lack of a better term, Medicare for All. At the very least, PBMs need to be regulated far more strictly on a national level, if not outright banned. 

(Map: Bloomberg Law)

PAST AFFAIRS

On the Current Affairs podcast, Max from Unfucking the Republic stopped by to explain more about Pharmacy Benefit Managers and their various schemes. 

❧ Twitter/X’s A.I. model “Grok” now has an image generation program that is available for subscribers. Unlike most A.I. apps, which limit users’ ability to portray certain public figures, copyrighted characters, and obscene or violent situations, Grok is largely unregulated (though, it does have directions written into its code to “avoid answers that are woke.”)

People have been using it to generate some truly bonkers art. Some of it is fun, like these images of Mario knocking back a cold one on the beach and trans Princess Peach (For the record it’s not all Nintendo characters): 

A.I. images generated with Grok, via evan loves worf and JD the Blazed Gooner on Twitter/X

But as is often the case on Elon Musk’s mutant website, the lack of moderation has led users to wield Grok in ways that are downright evil and criminal—they quickly figured out how to make it spit out child porn and accurate instructions to build fertilizer bombs. Even a lot of the jokier images being shared are too disturbing or tasteless to include in a family news briefing: like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris flying a plane into the World Trade Center, Mickey Mouse perpetrating a school shooting, and Princess Peach serving in the IDF. (She’s busy!) But the good news is that, at least for now, you can also use Grok to portray Elon in situations he’d probably be mortified by.

A.I. Image generated with Grok, via Alejandra Caraballo on Twitter/X

In other news…

• Following the takeover of the New College of Florida by right-wing activists appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis, the college’s Jane Bancroft Cook Library has discarded hundreds of books—most of them about gender, sexuality, and religion—unceremoniously in a dumpster, headed for the landfill. It’s a hideous act of censorship and vandalism, and the kind of thing that has to be resisted at all costs. (Sarasota Herald-Tribune)

The Nazis who burned so-called “degenerate” books in the streets of Berlin would be proud. 

(Image: Steven Walker via Twitter)

• In Detroit, a 15-year-old girl fell asleep while on a field trip at a courthouse. As punishment, District Court Judge Kenneth King had her handcuffed and put in jail clothes before threatening her with juvenile detention. The reason? He didn’t like her “attitude” and wanted to put her through his “own version of Scared Straight.” (WXYZ Detroit)
  
  
• Lawyers for Disney are trying to dismiss a wrongful-death lawsuit from someone whose wife had a fatal allergic reaction at one of the company’s restaurants. Their argument? Because the plaintiff once agreed to the “terms and conditions” on a one-month Disney+ trial subscription, he waived all legal rights to sue the company, and must go through arbitration instead. (CNN)

Public Domain Mickey does not approve of his former paymasters’ actions. 

• Starbucks just hired a new CEO, Brian Niccol, who’ll be paid $85 million and allowed to work remotely as much as 1,000 miles from corporate headquarters. So remember, when the company says its baristas shouldn’t get a decent wage, this is the kind of wealth and privilege the executives are hoarding for themselves. (CNBC)
  
  
• In Miami-Dade County, anti-union activists are trying a novel strategy to dismantle teachers’ unions. They are forming their own fake union, backed by the right-wing Freedom Foundation, to compete with the real one for membership. The group was formed after Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law allowing public sector unions to be decertified if they have less than 60-percent membership within a district. 50,000 public workers have already lost union recognition under the law. (Common Dreams)
  
  
• As America’s farmers grow older, their lands are being passed down to the next generation. But many young people seeking to buy a farm can’t afford to. According to In These Times, “Thirty-eight percent of young farmers—including 62% of young Black farmers—have student debt, which can make it impossible to take on farm loans.”
  
  
• LONG READ: For How Things Work, Hamilton Nolan has a new piece on how financial advisers are legally allowed to give clients bad advice that serves the advisers’ self-interest. The Biden Labor Department instituted a rule to require financial advisers to act in their clients’ best interests, but the industry and Republicans in Congress have fought it, and it is currently tied up in the courts.

AROUND THE WORLD

❧ As Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro’s purported election victory has been thrown into question, Joe Biden seemed to join several South American countries in suggesting last month’s vote should be re-done. Using voting receipts collected by the opposition, the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Washington Post have indicated that Maduro’s opponent, former ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia, received a greater number of votes than the incumbent president. A United Nations panel has also weighed in, saying that Maduro’s election lacked basic “transparency and integrity measures.” Maduro has faced international pressure to release the full slate of precinct-level data, which could vindicate his claims of victory, but has continued to resist doing so. In the absence of a definitive result, Latin American countries, including left-wing governments in Brazil and Colombia, have begun calling for Venezuela to hold new elections.

President Biden has been fully behind González’s claim to the presidency, but seemed to change his stance on Thursday: asked by reporters whether he supported new elections, he responded, “I do.” His national security team has since walked back the statement. The opposition, led by the right-wing politician María Corina Machado—who Maduro barred from running for the presidency in May—is cool with that, as they, too, have rejected calls to re-do elections, hoping to claim victory outright. Maduro, meanwhile, called Biden’s stance an “interventionist opinion on the internal issues of Venezuela.” There is a grain of truth to this, as the U.S. has been meddling in Venezuela’s affairs for years via crippling sanctions and failed coup attempts. But this charge loses a lot of weight considering that Maduro’s own allies Brazil and Colombia have also joined calls for new elections.

To make matters worse, Maduro has also instituted a ruthless crackdown on anyone who dares raise objections to the election result. He has stated outright that more than 2,000 opponents have been jailed since election day, pledging “no mercy” for dissenters, a situation that the International Criminal Court now says it is monitoring. Police have conducted “random and arbitrary” arrests of virtually any “suspected subversive,” according to the AP. Among the detainees have been human rights lawyers, journalists, and opposition candidates and activists.

Video: France 24

It’s generally a good instinct to question Uncle Sam's motives when it comes to Latin American politics, given its decades of undermining democracy across the region. The socialist besieged by imperialist Western powers is normally an easy figure to root for, but Maduro is no Salvador Allende or Evo Morales or even a Hugo Chávez. His actions have become impossible to defend, and it’s clear that his presence is an impediment to democracy in the country. At the same time, the opposition isn’t exactly a palatable alternative: González and Machado (the latter of whom El País referred to as “Venezuela’s Margaret Thatcher”) are bent on privatizing virtually every state-held company and gutting the nation’s social safety net. 

Opposition leader María Corina Machado (left) and presidential Edmundo González (center)   

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

At the moment, there doesn’t really seem to be a good direction this can go. But it would not be fair to hand the election to either side without access to all the voting data. Unless Maduro decides to release the data proving his win, holding new elections with all voting data made public seems like the most reasonable solution. The question is how something like that would even be logistically possible in such a fraught and repressive environment. 

In other news…

• The World Health Organization has declared a global emergency for M-pox (formerly known as “monkeypox”). There have been at least 15,600 cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo this year, with 537 deaths, and the disease has spread to at least 13 other African nations including Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria. The current outbreak seems to be primarily the “Clade 1” strain, which is deadlier than the “Clade 2” that spread internationally in 2022. (New York Times)

(Map: Newsweek)

• A new investigation from the Israeli paper Haaretz found that, “Random Palestinians have been used by Israeli army units in the Gaza Strip for one purpose: to serve as human shields for soldiers during operations. ‘Our lives are more important than their lives,’ soldiers were told.”
  
  
• The Wall Street Journal has a new report on how Ukraine carried out the bombing of Russia’s Nord Stream II pipeline in 2022, which sent European oil markets into chaos. The pipeline was partially German-owned, meaning that, were Germany not a major supporter of the Ukrainian war effort, it could have triggered NATO’s collective defense obligations and sparked a war.
  
  
• Former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose tenure in office famously lasted for less than the shelf life of a head of lettuce, tried to hold a pro-Trump speaking event in London—only to be interrupted by a giant banner showing a lettuce wearing googly eyes and the slogan “I Crashed the Economy.” She did not take it well. (Politico)

Lettuce thank the people who did this. (Video: Channel 4 News)

• Police have been killing a horrifying number of children in the majority Black Brazilian state of Bahia. According to UNICEF, 289 people 19 and under were killed by police last year, up from 242 the year before. Activists are pressuring President Lula to take action. (The Guardian)
  
  
• Thailand’s constitutional court just forced Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin from office on ethics charges, days after the court dissolved the country’s largest opposition party. (New York Times)
  
  
• Ceasefire talks in Sudan’s deadly civil war are off to a bad start, as neither the government nor the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group showed up to a scheduled meeting on the August 14. (BBC)
  
  
• In Australia, the government is enforcing a “court-ordered administration” of the country’s largest construction union, which will strip authority from 268 member-elected labor leaders and place a single unelected bureaucrat over the whole union. Left-wing critics are calling the move “dictatorial.” (Red Flag)
  
  

• We now know more about the origins of Stonehenge: Scientists have determined that its 6.5-ton Altar Stone was likely dragged more than 450 miles to its current site! (Live Science)

There are lots of other noteworthy “henges” besides Stonehenge.

Read about them in this article by Atlas Obscura.

SPIDER/FROG FACT OF THE WEEK

[Warning: Our arachnophobic readers might want to skip this one. Sorry. It will happen again.]

Tarantulas keep tiny frogs as pets!

 In nature, there are many examples of different animals cooperating together, from remoras clinging to the sides of sharks to ants herding aphids. But the relationship between tarantulas and the tiny humming frogs of South America is one of the most remarkable, as the big spiders seem to have actually domesticated their amphibian pals. 

As Melissa T. Miller writes for Nerdist, the partnership is a simple one: “The frogs get protection from the large spider, living in its burrow and even hiding under it. In turn, the frog eats ants and fly larvae that try to eat the spider’s eggs.” Typically, tarantulas would actually eat small frogs as part of their diet—but in this one special case, they refrain, and the frogs appear comfortable enough to even ride around on the spiders’ backs: