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Just Say Yes To Drugs: Drug Lobby Pumps Money and Ads Into Nevada Race for Reid

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is struggling for reelection this year and his friends have lined up to help him. This week, Nevadans saw a series of glossy, high-priced ads for Reid paid for by his friends in the pharmaceutical industry. Reid fought to include huge benefits for drug companies in the health care bill and now the industry is running ads touting his work for “Nevada families.”

The ads praise Reid for saving jobs and for understanding that “good jobs with good benefits [mean] a better future.” One ad asks voters to encourage Reid “to keep fighting for Nevada families.”

The campaign appears the work of Billy Tauzin a former member of Congress who secured windfall profits for the drug industry and was then made president of the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). The Obama administration worked with Tauzin to craft the health care bill to the approval of this powerful lobby. Critics allege that the Obama Administration is secretly pushing drug lobbyists to “protect their own” in pouring money into Reid’s campaign and others.

Reid has received $154,000 from Pharma PACs as of May 30. That makes him the second most supported politician of the drug industry after Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C.

Source: Examiner.

41 thoughts on “Just Say Yes To Drugs: Drug Lobby Pumps Money and Ads Into Nevada Race for Reid”

  4. eniobob,

    I don’t like soccer and I loathe Twitter, but after that bit of information? I may just sign up for both. 😀

  5. CEK drove right up to the door of defining the machinations of Breitbart and Armey: the design function of the tea baggers is to fractionate any opposition to the “status quo” (read “the Neocon Perpetual War and Increasing American Poverty Machine”).

  6. Yissil :One thing that definitely has to be acknowledged is that the tea party started out as a snowball and became an avalanche

    I think I respectfully disagree, I think the tea party movement started out as a mountain and is fast becoming a molehill.

    The problem the tea partiers have is that they resemble the Democrats in that they are made up of lots of folks with differing visions of America, which is why we hear no coherent or consistent policies from them.

    Establishment Republicans are ready to throw them under the bus(ie Lindsay Graham) because they are either threatening the status quo or creating electoral problems that will guarantee Democratic victories in areas where Republicans should have the upper hand. Nevada, NY-23 and it looks like Crist may snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in Florida for example.

    I don’t think the Tea Party is anywhere near as large as they would like us to believe and it’s shrinking daily as the racists and whackadoodles get more vocal.

    but that’s just my opinion and I been wrong more times than I care to admit

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  9. So, Prof. Turley, would you rather see Angle (sp?) elected???
    The lesser of two evils is still less evil.

  10. Yissil,

    You bring up a valid point about good times and quiet amongst the tea baggers. But there is another problem with this scenario too. By the tea baggers having an artificially inflated profile as an “astro-turf” group they are actually

    1) hindering moderates and/or progressives by creating the illusion that anyone dissatisfied with dysfunctional government is automatically one of the Tea Stained Brigade and

    2) they are getting some actual members into their fold from the moderate/progressive schools because the moderates and progressives feel they have “no place left to go” after Obama’s betrayals. This is also bad because it further dilutes the numbers of moderate/progressives from more important tasks (like organizing) by diverting their resources and time into a movement that is ultimately neither moderate nor progressive.

  11. I would like to voice my assent to those who are of the opinion that the teabaggers are clueless and/or racist morons. But I think clueless racist morons are a lot quieter when times are good.

  12. Sorry! I meant to write the following;

    If I lived in NEVADA, I’d vote for Reid. Think of Angle as a senator for six years. Angle has traveled light years past “batshit” crazy.

  13. If I lived in Utah, I’d vote for Reid. Think of Angle as a senator for six years. Angle has traveled light years past “batshit” crazy.

    **********
    Sharron Angle’s Advice For Rape Victims Considering Abortion: Turn Lemons Into Lemonade (Huffington Post, 7/8/2010)
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/08/sharron-angles-advice-for_n_639294.html

    Excerpt: Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle has moderated a host of policy positions in her transition from a primary candidate to general election contender battling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. One thing she has not backed away from has been her insistence that abortion should be outlawed universally, even in cases of rape and incest.

    In a radio interview Angle did in late June, the Tea Party favorite re-affirmed her pro-life sensibilities (rigid, as they are, even within Republican circles), when she insisted that a young girl raped by her father should know that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Much good can come from a horrific situation like that, Angle added. Lemons can be made into lemonade.

  15. I think most of the time a name is just a name, but Dick Arm(e)y truly lives by his moniker.

  16. I agree Elaine. The fact that they singled out black congressmen to spit on further illustrates this.

  17. Yissil–

    Personally I think it has a lot to do with bad economic times and economc inequality. Populist movements grow when people feel trapped by “the system”.

    **********

    I also think for some people that it is racism that drives them. A lot of these problems didn’t bother them when Bush & Cheney were in charge. Same things goes for the “birthers”–many of whom show up at tea party events.

    I’m not so sure that I’d call the tea party movement a populist movement. Think of the folks at these events who have said they want the government to get their hands off of Medicare–and some other programs that benefit so many of us ordinary folks. Where would lots of out-of-work people be if we didn’t have “social” programs like unemployment insurance? Where would so many of our elder generation be without Social Security?

    I think a lot of teabaggers are clueless. Many of them are just dittoheads mouthing the words they’ve heard from folks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity–and their ilk.

  19. Elaine M.: I think so, too. And Dick Armey’s organization, FreedomWorks, was always very involved in the whole tea party movement, supplying mostly organizaional know-how, publicity, and logistics.

    One thing that definitely has to be acknowledged is that the tea party started out as a snowball and became an avalanche. Personally I think it has a lot to do with bad economic times and economc inequality. Populist movements grow when people feel trapped by “the system”.

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