Democratic Presidential Candidates Make Strategic Visit to California

Transcription

1 Democratic Presidential Candidates Make Strategic Visit to California NEWS Democratic Presidential Candidates Make Strategic Visit to California By Debbie Stampfli Jan 27, :24:35 PM PACIFIC PALISADES/SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Last week, three of the Democratic presidential candidates, Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards spent time campaigning in Southern California in an effort to gain votes in the upcoming California primary. Sen. Barack Obama was reported to have visited Southern California on January 16, where he attended events in Van Nuys and Pacific Palisades. According to media sources, his appearance in Pacific Palisades was an unpublicized fundraiser. The day after Senator Obama campaigned in the Los Angeles area, on January 17, Sen. Hillary Clinton also briefly visited the area, electing to speak in Compton and attending a town-hall style meeting at California State University of Northridge, according to the college s web site. Also on January 17, Presidential candidate John Edwards visited the city of Los Angeles for his own campaign. Although the California primary is set for February 5, absentee ballots are already being sent out, and in the past, many Californians have opted to send in their votes by mail. Hillary Clinton visits California State University of Northridge. Photo by Nuclean Marcelo.

2 DailyBulletin.com - The case for Hillary Clinton The case for Hillary Clinton By Mariel Garza, Editorial Writer Article Created: 01/26/ :11:48 AM PST SEN. Barack Obama's inspirational oratories, sober intelligence and obvious photogeneity would no doubt make for a fabulous president. Sen. John Edwards' sense of economic justice based on his own humble beginnings surely makes him a worthy man for the job. And Rep. Dennis Kucinich, well, how can you say a bad word about a man who passionately believes in protecting the Earth, the environment, human lives and animals and has never one time diverged from his core beliefs? In fact, all the Democratic primary candidates are people who would credibly run a better America than the dude up front now. For that matter, any of the the Republican front-runners would do a better job as well, with the possible exception of former New York City Mayor Rudy "9-11" Giuliani. (Maybe it's a Big Apple bias on my part, but I can't trust a guy who threw away Chief William Bratton for being popular and thought Bernard Kerik was a swell guy.) But it's Sen. Hillary Clinton who's got my vote - for one simple reason: I think she can win. That is, unless her husband succeeds in (accidentally on purpose?) tanking her campaign by providing all that "help." Hah! You thought it was because she's a woman. While no doubt a plus on her side, her gender has little to do with her appeal. To hear it from the men, in fact, she's barely a woman until she shows a bit of emotion. Indeed, if I simply voted on a basis of identity politics, it would be just as easy to go for Obama. He's a half-breed like me. In my opinion, Hillary is the better half of the Clinton duo. She's the kind of wonky smart you want in a policymaker; you can tell by her fluidity with details and figures that she's the rare politician who actually reads - and remembers! - all those reports that most fob off on staffers to turn into policy Cliffs Notes. She's tough enough to survive the double standard applied to her as a woman in politics and surprisingly more charismatic in person than on TV. And, I have to admit, there is something about the knee-jerk nastiness toward Hillary's womanness ("She's cold," "She's soulless," "Her smile seems fake") that makes me love her all the more. I bet Margaret Thatcher didn't even have it so hard in the less gender-enlightened days of Hillary's positions aren't appreciably different from those of any of the Democratic candidates with a plan to repair the social safety nets left torn and sullied by eight years of a conservative administration. Though she comes from a more moderate place than Obama or Edwards, she also promises health-care reform, which we badly need, immigration reform, which

3 DailyBulletin.com - The case for Hillary Clinton Page 2 of 2 we badly need, and Iraq war policy reform, which we badly need. Still, up until last week, I was on the fence. Barack Obama has a presence that draws people across political, gender, racial and possibly even double-yellow lines in a way John F. Kennedy and even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did. Charm is fun, but it doesn't make for better leaders, as we Californians are starting to figure out four years and a $14 billion deficit later. Sometimes charming just covers up a lack of depth. she's probably the smartest. And that's good enough for me. Mariel Garza is a columnist and editorial writer for the Los Angeles Daily News. She blogs at Write to her by at mariel.garza@dailynews.com. Besides, Hillary is more charming than most people realize. I recently caught up with her at California State University, Northridge, on the 14th anniversary of the Northridge Earthquake. She showed up in the company of that other famous philandering Democrat, Antonio Villaraigosa. After an oddly rousing intro by Rep. Brad "Mr. Comb" Sherman, Hillary was welcomed by L.A.'s Team Hillary and CSUN President Jolene Koester. Hillary thanked "Madame President" for the comments, then quipped, "that sounds good." Who says she's humorless? Didn't even sound scripted. But I was sold on the other Clinton when I left the town hall at CSUN long before Hillary had stopped answering questions, exhaustively and with great facts and history, to the clearly unplanted questions in the crowd. She plain wore me out. And that was when I knew that Hillary may not be the most charming person in the room, and certainly not the most idealistic, but

4 TheDay.com - Pharmaceutical Industry Faces Increased Pressure Pharmaceutical Industry Faces Increased Pressure Pharmaceutical Industry Faces Increased Pressure By Anna Wilde Mathews, Avery Johnson, The Wall Street Journal close window Published on 1/27/2008 in Home»Business»Business National The U.S. pharmaceutical industry faces intensifying political and scientific attacks that risk further undermining its credibility just as Washington is gearing up to renew challenges to the industry's business practices. All the leading Democratic presidential candidates and, on the Republican side, Arizona Sen. John McCain, support importing less-expensive drugs from Canada. Democrats also back allow Medicare, the federal health care insurance program, to negotiate with the industry over pharmaceutical prices. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has supported new legislation that would allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve generic versions of biotech drugs something the agency generally can't do now. Over time, that could push down prices for often-costly biotech drugs. While it isn't certain how much Congress will do in an election year, some lawmakers are gearing up investigations and hearings that could shed a harsh light on the industry. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the Connecticut Democrat who heads the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees FDA funding, compares the drug makers to the tobacco industry. We have to have the same kind of scrutiny, she says. The prospect of a rough year on Capitol Hill could hardly come at a worse time for big pharmaceutical companies. As the drug makers struggle to refill weak new-product pipelines and prop up sagging stock values, they are increasingly relying on the government for revenue. The implementation of the Medicare drug benefit, for example, increased the portion of retail prescription-drug purchases paid for by government sources to 34 percent last year, from 28 percent in That growing role could make the industry more vulnerable to shifting political winds. Democrats' plans to expand health care to more Americans, though they could add customers to the drug companies' rolls, also risk granting Washington even more influence over the industry's revenue. A recent volley attacks on drug companies' marketing, research and information-disclosure practices give the industry's political opponents more ammunition. Billy Tauzin, chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, says we've got a thick skin, and we can handle attacks. Tauzin says he wants to continue to foster a marketplace that rewards his member companies for their $60 billion in annual research spending. We accept the notion that change is inevitable, he says. In just the past few weeks, pharmaceutical makers have been hit by a series of blows. Schering-Plough Corp. and Merck & Co. released the results of a study about Vytorin, part of a cholesterol-drug franchise that generates $5 billion a year, raising questions about whether the pill is better than a less-expensive generic. A new analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine found many antidepressant drugs aren't as effective as they have publicly appeared, because less-successful studies haven't always been published. Finally, the FDA recommended against using certain over-the-counter cough and cold medicines to infants younger than 2 years old, the latest inflection point in a lingering controversy over widely marketed products that may not have helped young children.

5 TheDay.com - Pharmaceutical Industry Faces Increased Pressure Page 2 of 2 On the campaign trail, Sen. Clinton told a crowd recently at the California State University Northridge campus that she wants to give Medicare the opportunity to bargain to get cheaper drug prices. The New York Democrat added, We pay for clinical trials... and then we end up paying the highest cost in the world because other countries drive a better bargain. Her rhetoric echoed similar attacks by her Democratic rivals, and even McCain, in a debate on Jan. 5, asked, Why shouldn't we be able to reimport drugs from Canada? answering himself, It's because of the power of the pharmaceutical companies. When former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney urged him not to cast the drug makers as the big bad guys, Sen. McCain countered, Well, they are. Tauzin calls the recent confluence of bad news a perfect storm. His trade group has formed a task force to consider overhauls to industry-marketing practices. We think some of the criticisms are valid and we ought to address them, he says. The industry will consider major changes, he says: Nothing is a sacred cow. Indeed, drug makers have parried past criticism with voluntary initiatives, including a registry of clinical-trial results and submitting commercials to the FDA for review before they air. Under pressure from medical journals, they also are registering trials before they are performed. A new law will make such efforts mandatory. Merck and Schering-Plough have defended their handling of the Vytorin study and said they are cooperating with the committee's investigation. After scrutiny of the children's cold medicines mounted, a number of their makers voluntarily withdrew the products aimed at kids younger than age 2, though they have said there is evidence they work in older children. The makers of the antidepressant drugs said they had made their study results, including negative ones, public in various ways, including databases. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, led by Michigan Democrat John Dingell, is examining the marketing of drugs including Vytorin, Pfizer Inc.'s Lipitor, Johnson & Johnson's Procrit and Amgen Inc.'s Aranesp. Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and ranking Republican Charles Grassley of Iowa also are investigating the industry. We see puffing, advertising based on untrue facts or facts that can't be substantiated, medically, ethically or legally, says Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, chairman of the Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee. The efforts are fueled by a growing genre of investigative research by physicians focused on industry influence and the reliability of medical literature. Catherine DeAngelis, editor in chief of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, says she has more articles on the drug industry's role in research coming soon. I want to show how they manipulate the data and why we have to be so cynical about them, she says. In the case of the recent antidepressant analysis, the New England Journal said in a statement that it is critically important that physicians have all the available data, and patients who participated in unpublished studies should not be left on the cutting room floor to make a drug look better than it really is. Amy Chozick, Alex Frangos and Laura Meckler contributed to this article. Regional