Questions for the presumed leader….

If you talk to most people, it seems that Hillary is the presumed candidate running in double digits ahead of Obama and Edwards. As a result, she inherits the position of being front runner and, therefore, cannot be immune from the hard questions…

Overall, the candidates are both promising and disturbing. They are promising because they are beginning to find solutions to the issues; it is disturbing because so many questions remain as the candidates drift off to platitudes and generalities.

As a result, while we know about Hillary’s ideas of a Health Plan, we don’t know where she stands on NAFTA, H1B, the PMA, lobbyists, etc. Every candidate has things that they don’t talk about; it may be how they finance their campaigns, who they take money from what those people expect in return, influence peddling and the like….. .And, no, we did not find the answers we were seeking at their websites.

I find that I am beginning to agree with the critics, like Edwards, who argue that Hillary cannot have an effective and objective health care program until she parts with the insurance companies, health care companies, pharmaceutical companies who have a vested interest in investing in a leading candidate.

Will she be inclined, for example, in bringing the cost of pharmaceuticals down when they are unnaturally and unjustifiably high. Nobody but Edwards and Kucinich have taken them on….and none of the other candidates have even questioned why their costs and rates are so high. The idea of letting Medicare negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies is a good one but does it go far enough….

Right now, those who are on Medicare must accept a plan that has the proverbial “doughnut” an ugly mechanism that makes those who sign up for these government programs pay out of savings or whatever for pharmaceutical costs that exceed a certain level. I believe it’s over 2,800 for most on the plan and they have to make up the difference until the plan gets to close to 7,000 dollars on most plans before l the full payment provision kicks in; but if you are in the “doughnut,” you still have to pay the premiums. Today, many are having a real problem filling that “doughnut” or paying the part that comes down heaviest on the plan member who is typically living on his savingsthat he’s seen flowing out to cover unanticipated costs for food, energy and health care. What this health care program pushed through by the White House does is create a bonanza for the PMA..

But that isn’t the whole story. And to understand the whole story, you have to be close to what has happened in the industry over the years.

PMA members, in large part, get away with what they charge because they have an organization that tells the representatives what they claim is the cost of introducing a new drug according to their own audits. They do this through the mechanism of lobbies and Congress, itself, where money passes to the Congress person in exchange for their efforts doing the heavy-lifting, i.e. winning over their fellow Congress people. During the prescription bill passage, every Congressman who aided and abetted this rip-off was compensated by getting a lobbyist job working for a pharmaceutical company. Every single one of them! Meanwhile, the rest of us got the doughnut that pushed many of us into jeopardy..

The key here is that the industry uses its own stacked audits which include marketing and advertising costs in their projections to virtually “charge at will”—whatever the traffic will bear. And it will bear plenty, because PMA members have virtually eliminated the “generic,” instead bringing out a variant of the former drug, perhaps not as good to keep the product new and costs high.

PMA audits are loaded by the way. The cost of drug introduction is only off by something like 80=90% according to more objective sources. But nobody questions PMA’s take on their own business.…. Could that have something to do with taking money from a PMA member company? The PMA alone has three or four lobbyists for every Congressman as we speak and this is not only influence peddling at its most obscene, it is proof that their methods produce success after success. And if the PMA and the lobbyists succeed, who pays the price?

You got it!



One of the other paramount issues is Hillary’s position on temporary green cards, the H1B, the special green cards for the information age jobs that have been limited to 160,000 this past year and Hillary wants extended.

These cards have been pushed through by the government to satisfy businesses need for qualified candidates. The truth is that there are plenty of qualified candidates in the USA, it’s just that business owners don’t want to pay them what they are entitled to so they claim that they can’t find the “best trained tech people,” which is a profound lie. They claim that the H1B gives them access to the very best talent, but that’s not true either since awards are made randomly not on the basis of a special skill. Who suffers? The American Middle Class, we who have taught the Asians the business who now are willing to work wages that are 25-40% less!....


Why does Hillary want these special class of green cards extended? Doesn’t she support the middle class?

Does she not realize that they rob jobs from qualified candidates in this country.

You can’t have it both ways: you can’t be for jobs here and then promote the new green cards….

She and the other candidates have to make themselves clear on this issue…



Also Hillary has not made clear where she stands on NAFTA.

Why not? Might it have something to do with the fact that her husband stood up for it.
Many got sucked into the language which seemed to make it look like “FREE TRADE” but it’s no such thing, it simply exploits the people of another country and allows the entrepreneurs to benefit at their expense…

Moreover, it has provisions that were not fully understood. In a recent settlement between a Canadian company and California, California was forced to bite the bullet for buying a Canadian product that was harmful to the environment and leached into the aquafir only to discover that they had to negotiate the issue behind closed doors. The people were not even involved and it was agreed that California, without debate, had to pay the Canadian company 100 million dollars. These NAFTA provisions are not compatible with our democratic system and were not fully realized when the bill came up for a vote….

Most Dems who have seen what happens under NAFTA are opposed to it.

It is biased against US companies because under NAFTA the playing field is not level.
The jobs go the “lead painters;” they do not stay here where they are needed.

We need clarity as to where the candidates stand on all of the critical issues that define where we will be twenty years from today.

It is a republican smokescreen that the election will be about the war when it should focus on the many other problems of this day and age from the Immigration problem, to global warming, to the economy and jobs.

We need to hear our candidates—not only Hillary—address the critical issues of our times and we must not judge them one with the other but as to the magnitude of the job they will be called on to perform if they win the Primary election.

The glass is no longer half full….

To paraphrase that wonderous Chinese lady of 92, a woman who has been struggling for middle class values for seventy years, if we are waiting for leaders to rise out of government, we can wait forever. We must recognize that the new leaders are us!

She couldn’t have said it better….

Les Aaron
The Committee for Positive Change