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This Week In Tarbell
The same 20 Big Health companies that unloaded whopping 2018 congressional contributions are already playing a big role in the 2020 fundraising campaigns. Tarbell analyzed where UnitedHealth, Eli Lilly and other big investors are putting their money at this early stage.
Tarbell Founder Wendell Potter’s lengthy conversation with the Real News Network continues in a third and final installment this week, where he discusses how the U.S. healthcare system will collapse if we don’t start reforms now.
Click Here To Listen To The Interview With Wendell Potter on Real News Network
Notable Reporting and Solutions
Returning presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is shifting his fundraising strategy to campaigning with “grassroots” meet-and-greets with people of all means — though he made a new move and hired a fundraiser for his second presidential run.
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Meanwhile, another 2020 Democratic contender, Beto O’Rouke, called out Big Pharma for marketing opioids as a “miracle cure” and proposed they perhaps face jail time — and multiple candidates are making similar moves against pharma.
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America’s big emitters and oil companies are investing more in lobbying for a carbon tax (yes, that’s right, they want to be taxed). But per The New Republic’s analysis, that’s because a carbon tax wouldn’t force them to fundamentally change their businesses, unlike, say, the Green New Deal.
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The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has financially benefited from some powerful — yet unsavory — new donors: a leading firearms manufacturer and the government of the United Arab Emirates.
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After President Trump tried to deter the House from passing a bill that would grant the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe’s right to 321 acres of land in Massachusetts, OpenSecrets explored the monied forces working both for and against tribes’ endeavors to run casinos.
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To move along the pending $26 billion merger, TMobile/Sprint made new promises to cover 97 percent of Americans with 5G within three years. But it begs the question: can this really be achievable when a substantial 8 percent of Americans don’t have fixed or mobile broadband coverage?
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Cheap steel imports from China have angered the owner of a family-run, Chicago-based company, so President Trump’s steel fight found a powerful ally: a Canadian billionaire.
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Spotlight on Local Influence
Missouri is the only state without a prescription drug monitoring program, and it’s held this sorry title for the past seven years. Kaiser Health News explores how this came to be.
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Multiple conservative organizations dumped big money into Pennsylvania’s upcoming 12th Congressional District race, an otherwise small match. This off-season election pegs Republican Fred Keller, who has been boosted by President Trump in the generally deep-red voting bloc, against Democrat Marc Friedenberg, a professor who has proven surprisingly successful in grassroots fundraising.
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Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis is taking an unprecedented trip to Israel, and he’s bringing along a merry band of prominent lobbyists and Zionist leaders.
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A DC councilman who used his position to solicit business from local lobbyists will be recalled.
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