Tag • #bernie sanders

chevron_right

Sanders hits back at Netanyahu: ‘It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable’

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 3 days ago - 16:11

US senator says Israeli prime minister using antisemitism to distract attention from ‘extremist and racist government’ policies

Bernie Sanders has hit back fiercely at Benjamin Netanyahu over the Israeli prime minister’s claim that US universities were being overrun by antisemitism on a scale comparable to the rise of Nazism in Germany.

In a video posted on X, the progressive senator from Vermont – who is Jewish – accused Netanyahu of “insult[ing] the intelligence of the American people” by using antisemitism to distract attention from the policies of his “extremist and racist government” in the military offensive in Gaza.

chevron_right

Suspect arrested in arson attack on Bernie Sanders’ Vermont office

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 8 April - 16:14

Shant Soghomonian was charged over attack on the office in which staffers were working but none were reported injured

Authorities say they have arrested an alleged arsonist accused of setting the US senator Bernie Sanders ’ Burlington, Vermont, office on fire while staff worked inside – but investigators have yet to release details about a possible a motive.

A justice department notification published on Sunday said Shant Soghomonian, 35, had been charged with using fire to damage the building but did not include any reason for his alleged actions.

chevron_right

Vermont senator Bernie Sanders introduces four-day workweek bill

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 15 March - 13:36

Independent lawmaker says it’s time for workers to have a better quality of life with a 32-hour workweek without loss of pay

Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, introduced a bill to establish a four-day US working week.

Studies and pilot programmes have shown that four-day workweeks can increase productivity and happiness. Given Republican control of the House and a Senate split 51-49 in favour of Democrats, however, the legislation stands little chance of success.

chevron_right

Big Pharma spends billions more on executives and stockholders than on R&D

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 9 February - 23:03 · 1 minute

Big Pharma spends billions more on executives and stockholders than on R&D

Enlarge (credit: Senate HELP Committee )

When big pharmaceutical companies are confronted over their exorbitant pricing of prescription drugs in the US, they often retreat to two well-worn arguments: One, that the high drug prices cover costs of researching and developing new drugs, a risky and expensive endeavor, and two, that middle managers—pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), to be specific—are actually the ones price gouging Americans.

Both of these arguments faced substantial blows in a hearing Thursday held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). In fact, pharmaceutical companies are spending billions of dollars more on lavish executive compensation, dividends, and stock buyouts than they spend on research and development (R&D) for new drugs, Sanders pointed out. "In other words, these companies are spending more to enrich their own stockholders and CEOs than they are in finding new cures and new treatments," he said.

And, while PBMs certainly contribute to America's uniquely astronomical drug pricing, their profiteering accounts for a small fraction of the massive drug market, Sanders and an expert panelist noted. PBMs work as shadowy middle managers between drugmakers, insurers, and pharmacies, setting drug formularies and consumer prices, and negotiating rebates and discounts behind the scenes. Though PBMs practices contribute to overall costs, they pale compared to pharmaceutical profits.

Read 16 remaining paragraphs | Comments

chevron_right

Nonprofit hospitals skimp on charity while CEOs reap millions, report finds

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 19 October, 2023 - 23:12

Enlarge / The Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (credit: Getty | Bobby Bank )

Nonprofit hospitals are under increasing scrutiny for skimping on charity care, relentlessly pursuing payments from low-income patients, and paying executives massive multi-million-dollar salaries—all while earning tax breaks totaling billions.

One such hospital system is RWJBarnabas Health, a large nonprofit chain in New Jersey, whose CEO made a whopping $17 million in 2021, while the hospital system only spent 1.65 percent of its nearly $6 billion in revenue on charity care.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is gearing up for a showdown next week with the CEO of RWJBarnabas Health, Mark Manigan. Nurses at one of the chain's locations, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, are on strike, saying that the facility has become a dangerous place to work due to inadequate staffing levels.

Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments

chevron_right

Bernie Sanders: workers should reap AI benefits in form of ‘lowering workweek’

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 17 September, 2023 - 16:25

Vermont senator says technology should benefit ‘not just people on top’ as he cites financial stresses confronting most Americans

If the US’s ongoing artificial intelligence and robotics boom translates into more work being done faster , then laborers should reap some of the gains of that in the form of more paid time off, the liberal US senator Bernie Sanders said Sunday.

“I happen to believe that – as a nation – we should begin a serious discussion … about substantially lowering the workweek,” Sanders remarked on CNN’s State of the Union.

chevron_right

Amazon’s allegedly “dangerous and illegal” warehouses spur Senate probe

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 21 June, 2023 - 19:40

Amazon’s allegedly “dangerous and illegal” warehouses spur Senate probe

Enlarge (credit: shaunl | iStock Unreleased )

Amazon must answer for its "abysmal safety record" after Amazon warehouse workers last year "suffered more serious injuries than all of the other warehouse workers in the country combined," the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) announced yesterday.

Launching an investigation, HELP Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent a letter to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy alleging that "Amazon makes decisions" "at every turn"—from setting its unreasonable pace of work requirements to providing subpar onsite medical care—"that actively harm workers in the name of its bottom line."

In 2022, Amazon warehouse workers suffered nearly 39,000 injuries, Sanders' letter said, reporting injury rates that more than double what other US warehouses report. The majority of injuries—95 percent—are serious enough to require time off work or a modification of the workers' duties.

Read 25 remaining paragraphs | Comments

chevron_right

I could not, in good conscience, vote for the debt ceiling bill | Bernie Sanders

news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 2 June, 2023 - 11:53

This bill cuts programs for the most vulnerable, and is totally unnecessary – why doesn’t Biden invoke the 14th amendment?

Let’s be clear. The original debt ceiling legislation that Republicans passed in the House would have, over a 10-year period, decimated the already inadequate social safety net of our country and made savage cuts to programs that working families, the children, the sick, the elderly and the poor desperately needed.

The best thing to be said about the current deal on the debt ceiling is that it could have been much worse. Instead of making massive cuts to healthcare, housing, education, childcare, nutrition assistance and other vital programs over the next decade, this bill proposes to make modest cuts to these programs over a 2-year period. This bill will also prevent a global economic catastrophe by extending the debt ceiling until January 1, 2025 – when we will have to go through with this absurd process once again.

Bernie Sanders is a US Senator, and the ranking member of the Senate budget committee. He represents the state of Vermont, and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress

chevron_right

Moderna CEO brazenly defends 400% COVID shot price hike, downplays NIH’s role

news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 22 March, 2023 - 21:42 · 1 minute

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 22 in Washington, DC.

Enlarge / Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on March 22 in Washington, DC. (credit: Getty | Chip Somodevilla)

In Congressional testimony Wednesday, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel unabashedly defended the company's plans to raise the US list price of its COVID-19 vaccines by more than 400 percent—despite creating the vaccine in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, receiving $1.7 billion in federal grant money for clinical development, and making roughly $36 billion from worldwide sales.

Bancel appeared this morning before the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee, chaired by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has long railed at the pharmaceutical price gouging in the US and pushed from policy reforms. After thanking Bancel for agreeing to testify, Sanders didn't pull any punches. He accused Moderna of "profiteering" and sharing in the "unprecedented level of corporate greed" seen in the pharmaceutical industry generally.

Sanders contrasted a recent survey finding that 37 percent of Americans can't afford their prescription drugs to the billions of dollars in profits reaped by drug companies. He noted several times that Bancel became a billionaire overnight amid the pandemic. Bancel is now estimated to be worth over $4 billion, Sanders added.

Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments