From: Joe Lieberman’s Endless Hypocrisy By Cliff Schecter, AlterNet. Posted October 30, 2006.
“More recently, Lieberman skipped town to avoid having to commit himself to President Bush’s “Medicare Reform” bill, which is perhaps the stupidest law ever passed by Congress. It bans the importation of drugs from Canada, and prohibits the government from negotiating bulk discounts with prescription drug companies, all of which ensures that prices will stay artificially high so Pfizer executives can afford that extra trip to Bora Bora.
Why wouldn’t a “Democrat” oppose such a giveaway? In Lieberman’s case, perhaps it’s because he’s been a top recipient of health care and pharmaceutical money since his election to Congress. Just to look at his numbers from 2006, Lieberman’s received $611,500 from “health professionals,” $457,019 from “insurance” interests and $240,740 from “pharmaceuticals/health products,” according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Lieberman’s No. 3 and No. 4 supporters, respectively, are Purdue Pharma and Aetna.
But Joe himself hasn’t been the only one in the Lieberman clan to benefit from the largesse of these bloated behemoths. In a move that no doubt had no ulterior motives, his wife, Hadassah Lieberman, was hired in early 2005 by the health and pharmaceuticals division of public relations giant Hill & Knowlton. She was given the ambiguous title of “senior counselor,” and Lieberman’s staff adamantly denied she was a lobbyist (she technically did not have to register as one). Yet, due to the controversy, she quit earlier this year.
According to Joe Conason, however, in a column titled “In Bed With Big Pharma,” Hadassah was paid $77,000 while employed there without any evidence of her actually having done anything. And of course by pure coincidence, a client of Hill & Knowlton’s, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, benefited a month after she was hired.
In April of 2005, her husband introduced a bill into the Senate to offer billions of dollars of new “incentives” to GlaxoSmithKline and other pharmaceutical companies, to “persuade them to make more new vaccines” (apparently billions of dollars in profit don’t provide quite the incentive they used to).
In other words: It’s good to be a Lieberman”
More on Senator Joe Lieberman:
Orthodox Democrat: The fall of Joe Lieberman Nazi Joe Lieberman ups censorship play Olympia Snowe is boss, Joe Lieberman plunges the dagger, Obama claims victory through retreat, the great liberal revolt begins Democratic leaders: No deal reached on auto bailout.
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