Why Chelsea Clinton Running for Office Would Be a Disaster

Matt Bruenig details the professional history of Chelsea Clinton, and it is a miasma and nepotism.

If she runs for office, and it is clear that Hillary, at least, wants her to continue in the "family business", her entry in politics would be a disaster:

Rumors are that Chelsea Clinton is gearing up to run for office. This is troubling news insofar as it might keep the Clinton machine and its hangers-on in politics. It also seems like a questionable idea insofar as Clinton is a nepotist legacy case whose whole career to this point has been hopping from one dodgy patronage job to another, not exactly the ideal image for the Democratic Party.

McKinsey (2003–2006)

After graduating high school, Chelsea goes to Stanford and gets a degree in history and then goes to Oxford and gets a degree in international relations. So far, so banal.

But after Oxford, Chelsea Clinton signed up with McKinsey, a consulting company known as an elite business training corps. She was the youngest in her class, hired at the same rank as those with M.B.A. degrees. Her interview was more like a conversation, said D. Ronald Daniel, a senior partner. “That’s why she was a good consultant, because we are professional question-askers and professional listeners,” Mr. Daniel said.  —  New York Times

Despite having no background in business, statistics, or any other related field, Chelsea gets hired by McKinsey straight out of Oxford alongside elite business school graduates. The interview process for that was “more like a conversation.”

It goes on from there, and it's an exercise in corrosive nepotism, including a gig with NBC that boils down to "$26,724 for each minute she subsequently appeared on air" and I agree with Breunig's final conclusion:

You could not put together a more unappealing force in the world than what Chelsea Clinton represents, personally or politically.

It doesn't make her a bad person, but it makes any entry into electoral politics by her an unmitigated catastrophe.

Hail, Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We Shall Never Be Destroyed! Cut off a Limb, and Two More Shall Take Its Place!*

It looks like the Clintons are now grooming Chelsea for a potential run for Congress:

While some pundits are declaring the Clinton political dynasty dead, sources tell us that it is far from over. Chelsea Clinton is being groomed for the New York seat held by Rep. Nita Lowey.

Chelsea could run for the seat in NYC’s 17th Congressional District once Lowey, a respected, 79-year-old career politician with nearly 30 years in office, decides to retire, we have exclusively learned.

Lowey’s district includes parts of Rockland and Westchester counties and, conveniently, Chappaqua, the Clinton family home base.

The only thing that I can think to add is a Sam Kinnison quote:

YOU DON'T HAVE TO LEAVE YET, DO YOU?!....YOU HAVEN'T SHOVED A CHAINSAW UP MY ASS YET!....MY HEAD'S STILL ON MY TORSO!!....I'M GLAD YOU F%$#ERS CAN HANDLE YOUR HIGH!

Seriously, too soon.  Way too soon.

Hell………This century is too soon.


^*H/t Lambert Strether for the title.

The EpiPen Price Gouging is a Family Affair

It turns out that Gayle Manchin, Senator Joe Manchin's wife and mother of Mylan CEO Heather Bresch, was appointed chair of the National Association of State Boards of Education , where she relentlessly pushed to increase EpiPen sales:

After Gayle Manchin took over the National Association of State Boards of Education in 2012, she spearheaded an unprecedented effort that encouraged states to require schools to purchase medical devices that fight life-threatening allergic reactions.

The association's move helped pave the way for Mylan Specialty, maker of EpiPens, to develop a near monopoly in school nurses' offices. Eleven states drafted laws requiring epinephrine auto-injectors. Nearly every other state recommended schools stock them after what the White House called the "EpiPen Law" in 2013 gave funding preference to those that did.

The CEO of Mylan then, and now, was Heather Bresch. Gayle Manchin is Heather Bresch's mother.

The whole Manchin clan is in on this bit of looting.

On the bright side, both New York (first link) and West Virginia are looking at antitrust and Medicate fraud allegations against the firm:

On the eve of a Congressional hearing on the soaring price and lack of competition for the EpiPen emergency allergy treatment, the attorney general for West Virginia has confirmed his office is investigating EpiPen maker Mylan for allegations of antitrust violations and Medicaid fraud.

WV Attorney General Patrick Morrisey confirmed the investigation today, revealing that he’d issued a subpoena to Mylan back in August, seeking documents and other information related to EpiPen, but that the company failed to meet the Sept. 7 deadline.

In response, Morrisey’s office has petitioned [PDF] a state circuit court to enforce that subpoena.

The state believes that EpiPen has been short-changing the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Services Bureau for Medical Services (BMS) by paying smaller rebates than it should have.

Drug companies pay different levels of rebates to BMS depending on whether a medication is considered an “innovator” or a “non-innovator.” The lower, non-innovator distinction, is usually reserved for generics, but Morrisey says that Mylan was paying that rate for EpiPen, even though it’s a brand-name drug.

This may constitute Medicaid fraud under state law, according to the petition.

The state also believes that Mylan may have violated state antitrust laws by filing an intellectual property suit against Teva Pharmaceuticals in 2012 over an in-development generic version of EpiPen.

Joe Manchin will lose his bid for reelection in 2018.

If the Democratic base does not aggressively primary him, they are idiots.

Experience My Ass!

One of the claims made by the Clinton campaign is that she has experience, and knows how to get things done.

I'm not quite sure how this makes sense.

She has no experience in an executive elected position, and Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington for 8 years.

She was in Congress for 8 years, Bernie for 25 years.

What's more, all through his legislative career, he has managed to make significant legislative accomplishments despite his status as a party outsider:

As Democrats cobbled together a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration law three years ago, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York was clear about one thing: His party could not suffer a single defection.

But one naysayer remained — Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who had opposed a similar effort in 2007 and once again did not like provisions in the new bill that he thought would displace American workers. And he had a price, a $1.5 billion youth jobs program.

Through wheeling and dealing, shaming and cajoling, Mr. Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, got his wish, and his favored provision was grafted incongruously onto a tough-minded Republican border security amendment and paid for by higher visa fees for some foreign travelers.

………

Yet in spite of persistent carping that Mr. Sanders is nothing but a quixotic crusader — during their first debate, Hillary Clinton cracked, “I’m a progressive, but I’m a progressive who likes to get things done” — he has often been an effective, albeit modest, legislator. He has enacted his agenda piece by piece, in politically digestible chunks with few sweeping legislative achievements in a quarter-century in Congress.

Over one 12-year stretch in the House, Mr. Sanders passed more amendments by roll call vote than any other member of Congress. In the Senate, he secured money for dairy farmers and community health centers, blocked banks from hiring foreign workers and reined in the Federal Reserve, all through measures attached to larger bills.

………

His congressional relationships with Democrats and Republicans have been largely legislative and not loving. A backscratcher he is not. Mr. Sanders is far more likely to be found alone in his apartment watching cable news than out for Chinese food with other members of Congress.

“He is not Ted Kennedy, who managed to have these personal relationships that come from the day in and day out working the halls,” said Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, who replaced Mr. Sanders in the House. “The way he works is consistent with his temperament and his skills.”

Counter to his reputation as a far-left gadfly, Mr. Sanders has done much of his work with Republican partners, generally people with whom he has little, but sometimes just enough, in common.

And Hillary Clinton's accomplishments?

Voting for the Iraq invasion, destroying Libya, installing a failed puppet regime in the Ukraine, and supporting every other ill conceived American imperial adventure over the past 15 years.

What experience is there to see?

Nepotism is not experience, see Bush, George Walker and Bush, Jeb.

Deep Thought

Link

A note to the bean counters who seem to think that political cartoonists are simply a cost to be cut:  You are a idiots who are destroying the industry.

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Portrait of the Candidate as a Young Pothead

It appears that Jeb Bush was a major stoner during his high school years:

In the fall of 1967, when a 14-year-old Texan named John Ellis Bush arrived on the bucolic campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, great expectations preceded him.

Jeb, as he was known, should have been an easy fit in that elite and ivied world. His much-accomplished father and his older brother had both gone to Andover; no one was surprised that Jeb had followed suit.

But this Bush almost ran aground in those first, formative prep school days. He bore little resemblance to his father, a star on many fronts at Andover, and might have been an even worse student than brother George. Classmates said he smoked a notable amount of pot — as many did — and sometimes bullied smaller students.

Resolutely apolitical despite his lineage, he refused to join the Progressive Andover Republicans club and often declined even to participate in informal bull sessions with classmates. In a tumultuous season in American life, he seemed to his peers strangely detached and indifferent.

(emphasis mine)

So Dubyah is the smart one?

That is a scary thought.