Remember, during the fiscal cliff debacle, Sunday, December 30, 2012 when Senator Mitch McConnell said “I’m willing to get this done, but “I need a dance partner?” Well it appears he already had a dance partner. Yes Senator Mitch McConnell was already dancing with Amgen Inc. The same Amgen Inc. that just days before, Wednesday, December 19, 2012, pleaded guilty for illegally introducing a misbranded drug into interstate commerce and was fined $762 million. The same Amgen Inc. that has lined Senator Mitch McConnell’s campaign pockets with $73,000.

Senator Mitch McConnell voted for and helped push the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (aka fiscal cliff legislation) through the senate. It was supposed to be legislation to deal with the looming tax increases that were going to take place January 1, 2013. So how did a $500 million gift for Amgen Inc. end up in this legislation? How does an entity like Amgen Inc. get favorable legislation buried quietly into major legislation? It’s simple. They own people like Senator Mitch McConnell and he does their bidding.

Regular folks like me and you go to jail when we commit crimes, but outfits like Amgen Inc. can resolve criminal and civil liability with a fine and then live for the day when their political stooges will bury words in legislation that will help them recoup the fines they paid for during their previous criminal activities. Amgen Inc. has friends, like Senator Mitch McConnell, in high places. How about you?

Moyers and Company The story told us of a pharmaceutical giant called Amgen and three senators so close to it they might be entries on its balance sheet: Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Democratic Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and that powerful committee’s ranking Republican, Orrin Hatch. A trio of perpetrators who treat the United States Treasury as if it were a cash-and-carry annex of corporate America. The Times story described how Amgen got a huge hidden gift from unnamed members of Congress and their staffers. They slipped an eleventh hour loophole into the New Year’s Eve deal that kept the government from going over the fiscal cliff. When the sun rose in the morning, there it was, a richly embroidered loophole for Amgen that will cost taxpayers a cool half a billion dollars.

Comments

comments