Quick announcement: Drop Your Lawsuits, Drop Your Prices!
Hightower is joining Public Citizen Texas, the Texas Organizing Project, Families USA and many more organizations on Wednesday, August 16th at the Federal Courthouse in Austin to demonstrate against Big Pharma’s greed. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association sued to prevent the Inflation Reduction Act from taking effect; many cities around the country are holding a series of actions calling on pharmaceutical corporations, PhRMA, the U.S. Chamber and other chambers of commerce to drop their lawsuits and instead negotiate lower drug prices.
Ohio voters scored a big election victory for women’s rights last week! It was a tricky vote, too – deceptively couched as a statewide referendum to approve a little technical change in the procedure for approving statewide referendums. How boring.
But Ohioans figured out that it really was a BIG vote on an underhanded ploy by right-wing Republicans to block the right of women to make their own reproductive decisions. Not boring. So, in a huge turnout, a whopping 57 precent of voters said “yes” to women and “NO!” to the tricksters.
Yet the referendum actually did encompass a procedural issue that’s an even bigger political story than the election results – namely the GOP’s ongoing attempts to rig election rules so it’s extremist minority can “win” without getting a majority of the votes. Background: A state constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion is already set to be voted on this November in Ohio. Right-wing Republican leaders fear that more than half of Ohioans will support that amendment. Thus, last week’s referendum was their desperate attempt to win by losing, specifically by decreeing that – Hocus Pocus! – constitutional initiatives must get 60-percent approval to become law. Yes, a 40-percent minority of voters could nullify the majority will of the people.
This gaming of the system by devious Republican officials and far-right extremists has become their core political strategy across the country. It’s actually a deeply embarrassing admission by them – they are conceding that they are now captives of ideological extremism and outright nutballism, making their party so completely out of touch with the American majority that they can’t win honestly. So they’ve become the Anti-Democracy Party, acting as rabid political veterinarians out to “fix” democracy by neutering the power of the people.
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Why the GOP Is Becoming a Clique of Rabid Political Veterinarians