For Joe Manchin, Corruption and Greed Are a Family Affair
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factkeepers.com /for-joe-manchin-corruption-and-greed-are-a-family-affair/
For Joe Manchin, Corruption and Greed Are a Family Affair - FactKeepers.com
Marty Kassowitz 6-7 minutes
Joe Manchin has moved into the position of doing Mitch McConnell’s job by obstructing forward motion on the long overdue social investment needed to move the country back from the abyss of the effects of the “trickle down economics.” (As a quick refresher, “trickle down” is the fake economic theory originated in the Reagan era that basically says if we make rich people and corporations richer, they will pull us all up. In a word, bullshit.)
It has been proven in the decades since that the money that flows upward stays there. This economic theory has gutted middle class America, made the idea of a one-breadwinner household a thing of the past and magnified environmental destruction while exploding military spending, medical costs and drug prices to name a few.
So what has this got to do with Joe Manchin? Everything. He has personal profit motivations to oppose efforts to remedy this situation. And, as the headline states, so does his family.
Let’s start with Joe. His opposition to the environmental aspects of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure investment being crafted is based on long-discredited opinions that reducing and eliminating the use of coal energy will not help. But the real deal is that he is heavily invested in coal and a considerable portion of his personal wealth is based on it.
According to Vice.com ,
For decades, Manchin has profited from a series of coal companies that he founded during the 1980s. His son, Joe Manchin IV, has since assumed leadership roles in the firms, and the senator says his ownership is held in a blind trust . Yet between the time he joined the Senate and today, Manchin has personally grossed more than $4.5 million from those firms, according to financial disclosures. He also holds stock options in Enersystems Inc., the larger of the two firms, valued between $1 and $5 million.
Another factor in the Manchin family mix is his daughter, Heather Bresch. She retired last year from her position as CEO of Mylan, the pharma company that bought the rights to the EpiPen. Bresch led the way in jacking up the prices of EpiPens to the nose-bleed levels they sell at today—in some cases as much as ten times what they sell for in other countries. Bresch presided over not only this, but also the complicated strategy of what is called a tax inversion, by merging with Abbot Labs and thus moved the company and its tax base to The Netherlands to avoid corporate taxes in the US.
This connects back to Joe Manchin in a couple of ways. A Washington Post article from 2016 details how Bresch got hired at Mylan in the first place. Joe got her the interview that led to her hiring. Factually, she started literally in the basement and rose the corporate ladder. A controversial MBA probably helped–controversial in that it was granted despite her being 22 credits short and was later rescinded . As the referenced articles note, Joe Manchin was Governor of West Virginia at the time.
One of the components of the “human infrastructure” package being crafted by Congress is the expansion of Medicare. And this will finally include a restoration of the ability to directly negotiate drug prices. The current law outsources the negotiations to PMBs or Pharmacy Benefits Management companies—also known as the Pharma Benefits Mafia. The largest of these is CVS with a 32 percent share of the drug market in the US. If the Medicare expansion were to pass and the Medicare administration to regain direct negotiating power for drug prices, it could end the price-gouging gravy train drug companies like Mylan have been enjoying. And this would affect Joe Manchin’s daughter’s wallet.
We have covered Joe and Heather’s connections that seem to link directly to Joe’s opposition to the infrastructure package. There’s one more person in the mix: Joe’s wife, Gayle Manchin. Where does she fit in?
In 2016, USA Today ran a piece about Gayle Manchin. At the time she was on the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), having been appointed by Joe when he was Governor of West Virginia.
After Gayle Manchin took over the National Association of State Boards of Education in 2012, she spearheaded an unprecedented effort that encouraged states to require schools to purchase medical devices that fight life-threatening allergic reactions.
The association’s move helped pave the way for Mylan Specialty, maker of EpiPens, to develop a near monopoly in school nurses’ offices. Eleven states drafted laws requiring epinephrine auto-injectors. Nearly every other state recommended schools stock them after what the White House called the “EpiPen Law” in 2013 gave funding preference to those that did.
Keeping it in the family takes on very specific and direct meaning with the Manchins. And Joe has demonstrated the ability to cast a blind eye to factors that negatively affect those outside the family circle. DemocracyNow posted a story earlier this year that gives major weight to this statement.
More than 1,400 workers in West Virginia are set to lose their jobs this week when the Viatris pharmaceuticals plant in Morgantown shuts down and moves operations overseas to India and Australia. Workers say they’ve had no response to their urgent requests for help from their Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, who is often called the most powerful man in Washington. Viatris was formed through a merger between two pharmaceutical companies, Mylan and Upjohn. Mylan’s chief executive, Manchin’s daughter Heather Bresch, got a $31 million payout as a result of the corporate consolidation before the new company set about cutting costs, including the closure of the Morgantown plant.
Lead, follow or get out of the way—the last is what Joe needs to do now. The information in this article took about 20 minutes to research. One wonders what would turn up with a comprehensive investigation.
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I was not going to post anything about Manchin until he spewed out his "I am not a liberal" bullshit today. No he's not a liberal, he's corrupt.
I suspect this will be the first of many hit pieces on Manchin.
I expect more to follow on anyone who doesn't vote for the $3.5 TRILLION bill the Democrats are trying desperately to push through.
Can ya believe it? Well gets us off of Trump for awhile LOL
enjoy
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Joe Manchin's Dirty Empire - Type Investigations
It is hilarious you bring this shit up when really you are just pissed he isn't rubberstamping the President's agenda like Schumer and Pelosi.
Oh, BTFW, Manchin laid out his plan on the limit way back in the summer.
What did Schumer do?
No doubt and cue the Sinema articles as well.....
Progressives are furious at Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, whose reasons for opposing Biden's $3.5 trillion agenda are mystifying (msn.com) .
Nice corrupt family he has there. The only reason he ever ran as a democrat is because of the coal miners. It used to be that Democrats in the coal fields actually cared about unions. Not anymore. But most democrats in the rural area are conservative Democrats (blue dogs), I know, my father was a conservative Democrat
I think a lot of politicians are corrupt in order to help their financial bottom line, if they can.
The annoyance of Manchin is that he says today that he doesnt want to spend money on "entitlements" and thus opposes the reconciliation bill. Manchin will use the laws and regulations, and his personal influence to help his own bottom line and his crooked daughters bottom line, but he doesnt want to help other people get "entitlements" that they may need because they are poor and without all his corrupt influence.
You have to realize that "entitlements" is a code word for anything that helps the average American.
Not always the case. I paid into SS and Medicare all my life and therefore am entitled to the benefits when the time comes.
The republican party recognizes them as "entitlements", and therefore is opposed to both of them.
Nope try again............
He must have been listening to the Democratic Party on this.
Sad.
Even sadder is the fact he apparently BELIEVED them!!
"Factkeepers.com"???
Oh for fuck's sake.
So basically we have ridiculous leftists doing their stereotypical "act like a 4-year-old when we don't get our way", spewing bullshit against one of the last remaining sane people in Washington.
Joe Manchin may be the unfortunate poster child of Elizabeth Warren's anti-corruption effort | Washington Examiner
Manchin came to Washington, and Manchin made some money. As the NRSC points out, the senator has quietly made over $5 million in profits since first swearing to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution. Most of that haul, they argue, came as Manchin was “overseeing the Manchin family business.”
Republicans are referring to Enersystems Inc., a coal brokerage that Manchin ran before turning his hand to politics. According to his financial disclosures for FY2017, Manchin collected between $100,000 and $1 million in dividends and interest from the shares he owns in the company while bringing in another $381,180 in ordinary business income from it.
The conflict of interest is obvious and well-documented. Manchin sits on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee which oversees the industry he profits from. Everyone from the New York Times to the liberal Think Progress has documented and dinged the senator for working to boost coal as a matter of public policy while drawing a check as a matter of personal finances.
Pushed on this issue as far back as 2011 shortly after he was elected to Congress, Manchin insisted that the money has “absolutely not” affected his judgment. His money, he said, has “been in a blind trust for a long time.”
But if Manchin were being honest, it is possible to make out general market shapes from behind a blind trust. The senator has to know policy that’s good for fossil fuels is good for his business partners, his family, and his own portfolio. Maybe that was in the back of his mind when Manchin introduced legislation combating EPA regulation of the coal industry. It is anyone’s guess. We don’t know the senator’s heart, only his government-mandated financial disclosures.
The impropriety of Manchin’s money proves what Warren was saying. People get rich in Washington regardless of what team they are on. It is exactly the sort of thing, as Warren noted, that leads to a "national crisis of faith in government."
Gotta love it when Democrats turn on their own and risk passing their agenda over it!
Yup, democrats will turn on corrupt democrats.
Republicans will idolize corrupt republicans.
That IS a key difference between the 2. Thanks for pointing that out Texan1211.
gee, did Democrats turn on Manchin when they elected him Senator?
Or reelected him to that position?
Or when Democrats elected him Governor and Sec. of State?
Is THAT what you mean when you claim democrats will turn on him?
When will that shit start taking place?
Ahh but that was then, this is now. They got their first whiff of corruption when he stood up to the rest of the party earlier this year, now they're absolutely sure of it.
With WV ranking at or near the bottom in many categories, actually dead last in infrastructure, one would think that the Senator would be in favor of the bill.
Manchin voted for the smaller infrastructure bill. If it fails to pass it is ALL ON THE DEMOCRATS.
But the bipartisan infrastructure bill only deals with roads, bridges, and highways. (I mean really, real infrastructure that will benefit everyone- get real!)
The Democrats need their 3.5 trillion dollar plus social infrastructure plan to fundamentally transform the US. Not to mention to pay back their properly woke rich environmentalist friends that donate so much money.
If Democrats had any morals they would pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill; and then negotiate in good faith with Republicans and their own more moderate members on the rest.
For the past 40 or 50 years the American people have been fed this "trickle down" bullshit while the middle class shrinks, poor people suffer, and the rich get richer.
The reconciliation bill is meant to address some of that situation. The people in WV that put Manchin in office will suffer because of him, and a lot of them are too dumb to know it.