Big Pharma in Congress

Pharmaceutical companies are injecting Congress with millions of dollars in lobbying. For example, Truvada increased its lobby spending by 117 percent in the third quarter of 2019 in comparison to the same time last year. AbbVie increased its spending by 200 percent and Sanofi, a company that produces insulin, increased its spending by 105 percent, according to Jesse Hellmann for The Hill.

Given that there is bipartisan support and bills being drafted in Congress, pharmaceutical industries feel that their profits will decrease if these bills pass. One of the bills was introduced by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, which would allow the government to negotiate prescription drug prices through Medicare. In response to this proposal by the Speaker, besides increased lobby spending, industries claim that "government price-setting would kill drug innovation." Despite this infusion of money into Congress by lobbyists, I think there is political will to reign in drug companies, since polls show that affordable healthcare and accessibility of medicine are becoming increasingly salient issues.

   
Link: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/466980-drug-companies-spend-millions-on-lobbying-as-congress-tries-to-reign-in

Floating Dairy Farms

Rotterdam, Netherlands is home to 32 cows that live on a floating farm. The concept of a floating farm began in 2012 by Minke van Wingerden and her partner Peter after Hurricane Sandy hit. The pair were in New York at the time and after two days they saw that all the fresh food on store shelves were gone. The Dutch businesswoman thought to herself "why not produce fresh healthy food on the water close to the city?" (Sterling, csmonitor.com) 

The dairy farm is almost completely self-sustainable. The cows rest on the upper levels, or go to the feeding station to eat hay, grass clippings, and beer byproducts. Also there is a small plot of land that the cows can roam around on. In addition, on the lower decks there is a visitor center, store, milk and manure processing facilities. The roof collects rain water and floating beside the farm are solar panels. Lastly, the farm is decked out with the latest farming technology, including manure-scooping robots and self-cleaning stations. The goal of Wingerden and her partner is to be environmentally friendly and innovative and I think they are quickly on their way to accomplishing their goal with this farm.

  

https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2019/1001/Urban-Floating-Farm-creates-local-dairy-for-cities

TripAdvisor: A Defender of Whales and Dolphins

On October 2, 2019, TripAdvisor has announced a major step in its animal welfare policy that launched in 2016. TripAdvisor will no longer sell tickets to any attraction that breeds captive whales and/or dolphins, also known as cetaceans. The aim of this animal welfare policy is to put pressure on attractions like SeaWorld and Loro Parque to develop seaside-sanctuary environments, which is defined as "a body of water, sech as a bay or cove, that houses cetaceans in as close to a natural environment as possible while providing protection and oversight from qualified husbandry and veterinary staff." (Wilson, theguardian.com) Also, the implementation of TripAdvisor's policy will encourage no-breeding policies, no performance shows, and prohibit all forms of human to animal physical interactions on the part of the attractions.

In crafting this policy conservationists, zoologists, and marine biologists were consulted by TripAdvisor. They feel that this policy will successfully promote true sanctuaries and is animal welfare driven, as opposed to profit driven.     

Link to the Article   

Google's Remedy for Dublin's Housing Crisis

Google is coming to Dublin, Ireland. Jennifer O'Connell, a reporter for The Irish Times, writes that Google will build a 1,000 unit apartment that would be available to private individuals to rent or buy. This apartment building is meant to alleviate the issues that are arising from the Dublin housing crisis, similar to what the Bay Area is experiencing. However, the intended use of the apartments assumes that the units "would go to Googlers already here- it seems more likely they would be used to lure new recruits to [Ireland's] creaking-at-the-seams capital."(O'Connell, irishtimes.com)

Also, O'Connell reports that Dublin is becoming increasingly unaffordable. She worries that the Government is passing it's responsibility to resolve the homeless crisis in Dublin off to a multinational corporation, like Google who is beholden to shareholders. Instead, she suggests that Google help the housing crisis by creating a remote workforce, but believes that Google and other Silicon Valley businesses would never implement this because "it would mean letting the workforce have a life outside the gilded cage."


Link

Another Shift in the President's Priorities

After campaigning in 2016 to "load up" Guantanamo Bay, the President now has explicitly said that he does not want to send anymore fighters there. David Welna, a reporter for NPR, reports that during a visit with the Australian Prime Minister, the President said that "the Unites States is not going to have thousands and thousands of people that we've captured stationed at Guantanamo Bay, held captive at Guantanamo Bay for the next 50 years spending us billions and billions of dollars." (Welna, npr.org) This change may have been sparked by recent reports that the annual costs per prisoner adds up to $13 million, and now there are 40 remaining.

Before these financial reports came out, an executive order was signed last year authorizing the renovation and expansion of prison facilities at GITMO. This order led many who follow this issue to believe that the administration was preparing to imprison Islamic State fighters from Iraq and Syria. However, because the President has a business perspective when making most of his decisions, these astronomical numbers caused him to reprioritize saving America's money over the imprisonment of those he refers to as "bad dudes". Now, he has suggested releasing them at borders, but it is unclear if he is referring to the borders of our European allies who have captured the fighters, or the fighters home country borders.

 

Link to the Article

English Channel Record

Sarah Thomas, a 37 year old woman from Colorado and an ultramarathon swimmer, became the first person to swim across the English Channel four times nonstop. She swam for a little over 54 hours on what was meant to be an 80 mile swim, but was actually 130 miles because of the tides.

Now, you may be asking yourself, why would someone force themselves to swim for over 54 hours in frigid, rough waters? The answer: Thomas swam "for those of us who have prayed for our lives, who have wondered with despair about what comes next, and have battled through pain and fear to overcome." A year ago, Thomas was being treated for breast cancer. She added to her prior statement that her swim was dedicated to everyone afflicted with cancer. Thomas was so deeply motivated that she persevered through the salt water hurting her tongue, mouth, throat, and being stung in the face by a jellyfish. She is a strong, remarkable woman who deserves to be celebrated.

   
The picture is from Google.
Article Link

Unwarrented Use of Solitary Confinement

Both immigrant-rights advocates and a whistle blower are shining a light on the unwarranted, arbitrary use of solitary confinement in immigrant detention centers. The Atlantic obtained documents that span four years between 2014-2018 from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security that reveal the extensive use of solitary confinement. Some reasons cited in the documents for putting immigrants in isolation include, "contraband sugar packets, menstruating on a prison uniform, and requesting an ankle brace." (Urbina, The Atlantic)

Although both the Obama and Trump administrations are guilty of over utilizing this form of detention, the rate of solitary confinement has been steadily increasing under the Trump administration. More often than not, the Trump administration cites mental illness and hunger strikes as a reason for isolating a person. In fact, 40% of those place in solitary confinement were considered to have mental illnesses and in some cases spent 370 to 904 days in solitary confinement. When a person has a mental illness, solitary confinement worsens their condition, which ICE's own doctors and lawyers have confirmed.

Solitary confinement that lasts more than fifteen days for any person is considered to be a violation of human rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights, and yet this practice of isolation continues. The practice of solitary confinement is only supposed to be used as a last resort, according to a 2013 federal directive, and some human rights lawyers argue that because many of the immigrants are being held on civil, not criminal charges, that such punishment is not supposed to take place in the first place.
         
Article Link

Second Blog: Mental Institutions

As we have discussed in class, the issue of gun control is not clear cut (especially when politicians try to muddy the waters). Recently, the President has offered a new proposal to reduce gun violence in the United States, which is to build more mental institutions. When trying to flush out how effective the President's proposal would be at curbing gun violence it was hard to find analysis from both sides of the political spectrum, so I settled on this article by Jacqueline Alemany with The Washington Post.

In the week of Aug. 22, the President was quoted saying that in regards to the "whole gun situation... I do want people to remember the words 'mental illness.' These people are mentally ill... I think we have to start building institutions again." (Alemany, The Washington Post) In addition to building institutions, the President's administration has been briefed on the creation of a new agency inside the Health and Human Services Department known as the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency (HARPA). HARPA, a $40- $60 million project if it receives Congressional approval, would use artificial intelligence to identify people with mental illness that could potentially become violent. Also, the research collected would eventually be made public. Although, mental illness may be a factor in violent acts, experts have found that it is rarely a predictor and studies have revealed that most mass shooters have not had diagnosed mental illnesses. Ultimately, both of these ideas that are being considered by the President and his administration demonstrate that they view the issue of gun violence as a health issue as opposed to an issue of an overabundance of guns in America.      

Link (2): https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/22/white-house-considers-new-project-seeking-links-between-mental-health-violent-behavior/?noredirect=on

First Official Blog about Homelessness

Homelessness in America is on the rise generally, except in Atlanta. Alex Kellogg, a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor, recently published an article titled "Atlanta refused to give up on homelessness. It's working." In this article, Kellogg briefly explains how Atlanta has managed to achieve a goal that many other American cities are struggling to reach: a sustainable solution to the homeless crisis.

Kellogg begins the article by introducing readers to a woman named Roxie, who went from being a homeowner to being homeless, but with the opportunity of permanent supportive housing being available to her, Roxie no longer lives on the streets. Roxie is just one example of how public and private sectors partner  to tackle the issue of homeless is yielding tremendous rewards for the homeless population at large in Atlanta, which has "declined every year for more than a decade through 2018" (Kellogg, The Christian Science Monitor). A majority of this success can be attributed to the coordination of multiple programs in the Atlanta area to meet the needs of their homeless neighbors. The programs do this by helping people navigate the bureaucracy of enrolling in different programs and becoming renters. Also, people gain access to counselling services, health care, and transportation. Ultimately, these programs give people some stability in their lives.

This article offers some promising solutions to the homeless problem. However, more research would have to be done to see how the results in Atlanta can be replicated in other cities, like San Francisco and New York.

Link: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2019/0823/Atlanta-refused-to-give-up-on-homelessness.-It-s-working 

First Blog

Welcome to my current events blog for course PSC-2420-01!