politics

THE VERTEX SHELL GAME

Vertex Headquarters. Photo ©2015 Derek Kouyoumjian

Pharma’s Donation to Boston, Other Cities Converts Public Funds to PR Gold

October 24, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Vertex Pharmaceuticals made a big PR splash last week with an announcement of a significant donation to Boston and other cities where it does business. The Boston-based company, best known for its cystic fibrosis meds, has pledged to “spend $500 million on charitable efforts, including workforce training, over the next 10 years,” according to the Boston Globe, and “much of the money will go toward boosting education in science and math fields as well as the arts.” The company “also wants to set aside money for grants to help young scientists and researchers.”

Well isn’t that nice. Over 10 years, $500 million works out to about $50 million a year. Sounds quite generous, yes? John Barros, Mayor Marty Walsh’s chief of economic development, certainly thinks so: “The establishment of a Vertex foundation is a long-term investment in the people of Boston and the neighborhoods of Boston … That’s ultimately what we hope for when corporations move their headquarters to the city.”

But sharp-eyed locals would disagree. We’ve seen this gambit many times before in the Bay State—most recently when General Electric played it last year: A big business that has gotten bad press for various kinds of questionable behavior and/or outright malfeasance decides it needs to improve its image. And it does so by the simple device of expanding its advertising budget in the form of “charity.”

The important thing to remember with such “donations” is that the corporations in question often get far more money from government at all levels than they ever give back to society. So it’s not really charity at all. It’s just public relations by other means. Aimed at being able to continue to dip from the great public money river largely unnoticed by everyone but the few investigative reporters managing to ply their trade in this age of corporate clickbait.

To that point, let’s look at four ways that Vertex has benefitted from public support. Then reconsider its most excellent announcement in that light.

1) Tax breaks and direct aid

Readers might remember Vertex as the company that got $10 million in state life science tax incentives between 2010 and 2014 and $12 million in tax breaks from the city of Boston—both in exchange for adding 500 local jobs to their existing staff of 1,350 by 2015 and, quixotically, for moving their headquarters from Cambridge to Boston. According to the Globe, the Commonwealth also took out a $50 million loan to pay for “new roads and other improvements” to the new HQ’s Fan Pier site.

Why? As is often the case in the wonderful world of corporate finance, Vertex told then-Gov. Patrick that it might leave the state if it didn’t get the appropriate… um… “incentives.” So that apparently played a role in getting state and local government in gear. The deal was based on the expected performance of Vertex’s blockbuster new hepatitis C drug, Incivek. But things didn’t go as planned. According to MassLive, when the company pulled the plug on Incivek in 2013 after being outgunned by another company’s hep C med, it agreed to pay back $4.4 million of the state money. In 2015, according to the Boston Business Journal, after Vertex failed to meet its job creation target, the city reduced its tax breaks to $9 million—but didn’t ask the company to pay anything back and will keep its deal in place until 2018. Leaving Vertex reaping a windfall of almost $17 million in state and local tax breaks. Oh, and that sweet loan, too.

2) Gouging public health programs

With the release of two major successful cystic fibrosis meds and more new related meds set to breeze through the FDA drug approval process, the company is starting to expand. And how could it not? In July 2017 it raised the price of its newer med, Orkambi, by 5 percent to $273,000 per patient per year, according to the Boston Business Journal. A product that did $980 million in sales in 2016 before the price increase. In 2013, the company had already raised the price of its first major med, Kalydeco, from $294,000 to $307,000 per patient per year. With some patients paying as much as $373,000 per year, according to an October 2013 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today article. Cystic fibrosis doctors and researchers have strongly protested, but to no avail.

It’s true that most patients don’t pay anywhere near that amount of money for the meds—because public and private insurance eat the lion’s share of the still-outrageous cost. But the final sticker price remains tremendously high. And the company doesn’t say much about who does pay a big chunk of the bill: the government, and therefore the public at large. Stick a pin in that. Vertex, like virtually every other drug company, has a business model based on gouging the public with ridiculously high prices that various government insurance programs are mandated to pay.

Programs like, in this case, federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). As an Oct 4 letter from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (whose eminently questionable role in the funding and development of Vertex’s cystic fibrosis meds will likely be the subject of a future column) to the Senate Finance Committee explained, about half of all cystic fibrosis patients—who used to die young before the new treatments came online—are under 18 years old. So they’re generally covered by CHIP. That program, sadly, was defunded on Sept 27 by our psychotic Congress as part of the Republican Party’s crusade against Obamacare. Most states will run out of their 2017 CHIP money early next year, and unless they find money in their own budget to replace it or Congress manages to do the right thing, over 4 million kids—including thousands of cystic fibrosis patients—are in danger of losing their health coverage.

Vertex is not directly to blame for that crisis, but the situation does make its promise that some of its $500 million donation “will be spent helping cystic fibrosis patients get access to Vertex drugs that help them breathe easier and live a more normal life” look even more ridiculous than it otherwise would. Because Vertex and other pharmas certainly have no plans to lower the outrageous prices of their top meds for any reason. They’ll give some destitute patients “access” to their drugs. But everyone else pays—primarily through government insurance, often in tandem with private insurance. After what the pharma industry terms “discounts”… that still result in usurious prices. So even if one takes whatever portion of the donation actually goes to helping patients get cheaper meds as an inadvertent giveback of some of the lucre they’ve leeched off the government, it’s going to be even less helpful than it otherwise would have been if half the patients on those meds lose their insurance next year.

But Vertex isn’t content with just draining funds out of the US federal and state governments. According to Forbes, it’s pioneering ways to suck public funds out of countries with national health services. “Vertex seems to have finally cracked a long-festering problem: selling its expensive drugs in European markets, which are tougher at negotiating prices. Ireland recently agreed to give Vertex a flat, undisclosed annual payment; in return, all patients who need the drug will get access … other countries outside the U.S. will make similar deals … new CF drugs, including discounts, will cost $164,000 per patient in the U.S., where a fragmented health care system allows for less tough negotiation, and $133,000 in other countries. With almost all of the 75,000 CF patients in those countries treated, that would be an $8.5 billion market.”

3) Government-backed monopolies

Moving on, there’s another key way that Vertex makes bucketloads of money with government help: gaming the Orphan Drug Act. Passed in 1983, it was meant to create a strong incentive for pharmas to research drugs that treated conditions suffered by less than 200,000 patients. In practice, it’s become a standard way for pharmas to get a seven-year monopoly on many of their meds. And while it’s certainly true that cystic fibrosis afflicts about 30,000 people in the US—well below the 200,000 patient threshold—it’s also true that it’s no accident that Vertex chose to focus on the disease. Because, according to its 2016 10-K annual report filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has won orphan drug status for both Kalydeco and Orkambi. Guaranteeing it seven years of monopoly production and distribution of both of the desperately needed and wildly overpriced meds. And 10 years in the European Union, under similar laws.

As Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine researchers commented in the American Journal of Clinical Oncology in November 2015, such monopolies make “it’s hardly surprising that the median cost for orphan drugs is more than $98,000 per patient per year, compared with a median cost of just over $5,000 per patient per year for non-orphan status drugs.” The same study demonstrated that “44 percent of drugs approved by the FDA [in 2012] qualified as orphan drugs.” So winning orphan drug status is one structural mechanism that makes it possible for pharmas like Vertex to charge crazy high prices for many meds.

A recent article by Harvard Business Review adds that pharmas enjoy monopolies on many other meds thanks to the 1984 Drug Price Competition and Patent Term Restoration Act—which allows them to enjoy “patent protection to effectively monopolize the market” for new meds. Once that protection expires, the field is then supposed to be open to other pharmas to produce far cheaper generic versions. Which is doubtless what Vertex CEO Jeffrey Leiden was referring to in a June Globe piece when he defended the company’s sky-high drug prices, saying “‘This is a system that actually works. It rewards innovation and stimulates it. And then after the period of [market] exclusivity is over, it actually makes these innovations free’ for future patients.”

What he doesn’t mention, however, is that pharmas routinely lobby and litigate to extend their monopolies on meds, and actually pay off potential generic producers to not manufacture generics. Delaying the cheaper meds’ arrival on the market and costing public insurance programs like Medicare, Medicaid, the VA system, and CHIP huge amounts of extra money. Which then flows into corporate coffers. All the more so because the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) did not finally give the government the power to negotiate with pharmas to rein in drug prices, according to Morning Consult. The HBR story also notes that generic companies themselves often obtain exclusive monopolies for shorter periods of time and that their products are sometimes substandard—resulting in recalls. All these delays can keep cheaper meds off the market for years.

4) Public science, private profit

Finally, there’s the fact that much of the basic research that allows pharmas to exist is done by the federal government through the National Institutes of Health. In the case of Vertex, a direct connection has already been demonstrated. A May 2013 article by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today explains that the company’s first cystic fibrosis med, Kalydeco, was only possible thanks to “a hefty investment from taxpayers through grants from the National Institutes of Health, which underwrote the cost of early research, which identified the gene that the drug targets.”

If one were to put a price tag on all the basic science Vertex uses to develop its cystic fibrosis meds—and other meds—that comes straight from the NIH, what would it be worth? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? It would be a great research project to estimate the total, but suffice to say that it would be a great deal of money. Money that Vertex could never have leveraged on its own back in 1989 when it was a startup.

Conclusion: the racket and the damage done

Add it all up: tax breaks, direct aid, profits from price gouging CHIP and other public insurance programs, profits from orphan drug status, and profits based on research directly attributable to NIH research. How much money will Vertex ultimately get from government at all levels? A hell of a lot more than that $500 million it proposes to give back to communities like Boston—mostly in ways that either benefit the company directly by providing it with a new generation of trained researchers or indirectly by gilding its public image. Assuming that it ever actually gives that much money away. Which the public has no way of knowing at this juncture.

Any more than we can know how much Vertex spends on lobbying annually to guarantee a constant flow of fat stacks of public cash. Since its shareholders at its most recent annual meeting in June thoughtfully shot down an initiative by a small number of religious shareholders to force the company to report its actual lobbying budget going forward, according to the Boston Business Journal. Not long after Vertex successfully colluded with 10 other pharmas to get the SEC to allow them to quash shareholder resolutions from the same religious groups that would have made the company’s drug pricing formula public, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Then, taking all the above into consideration, check out Vertex’s annual advertising and promotions budget for the last three years: $16.2 million in 2014, $24.5 million in 2015, and $31.4 million in 2016, according to its latest annual report. Going up, right? So tack $50 million a year onto that last figure and we get an $80+ million ad budget. Totally doable for a company with cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities worth $1.67 billion on hand on June 30, 2017. A company that’s now becoming profitable after years of running in debt—all of which has only been possible with massive public support.

Now come back to Vertex’s “donation.” Doesn’t look so generous anymore, does it?

Reforming the twisted wreckage of our drug research and distribution systems in this country will take a massive grassroots effort lasting years. But there’s one way that local advocates can get going on that project fast: demand that municipal and state officials stop giving public money to pharmas like Vertex, or participating in pharma PR stunts like promising to recycle some of that money to educate local kids—more of whom would have a fine education already if our elected officials stopped throwing money at giant corporations that should be going to social goods like public schools.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2017 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

TOWNIE: A WORM’S EYE VIEW OF THE MASS POWER STRUCTURE

Students at rally at Boston City Hall by NewtonCourt (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

From the guy that brings you Apparent Horizon

October 18, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The rich and powerful interests that control Massachusetts politics and the state economy have their fingers in every conceivable pie. So numerous are their projects that it’s difficult for most news outlets to keep track of them, let alone cover them all. Yet it’s critical for our democracy that they be covered. Which is why I’m launching Townie—a regular news column that will provide short takes on all the elite wheeling and dealing that most people never hear about.

Business Organizations Sue to Down “Millionaire’s Tax” Referendum

In an era when taxes continue to be slashed for wealthy people and corporations as government social programs are starved for funds, one would think that the Fair Share Amendment (a.k.a. “millionaire’s tax”) proposed by the Raise Up Massachusetts coalition of religious, labor, and community organizations would be a no-brainer. The idea is slated to be put in front of Massachusetts voters as a binding referendum question in November 2018. If passed, it would amend the state constitution to add a 4 percent tax on top of the Bay State’s infamously inadequate 5.1 percent flat income tax for all households earning $1 million or more. The money collected will be mandated to fund public schools, transportation, and road maintenance. All sectors that really need the money. And best of all, only 19,500 families would have to pay in 2019 if the tax goes into effect—0.5 percent of all filers.

Well apparently any tax is a bad tax in the eyes of the Commonwealth’s “business community.” No matter how many people it would help, and how painless it would be for the tiny number of 0.5 percenters. So, according to an Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM) press release, the leaders of five pro-corporate organizations are trying to torpedo the referendum before it can be voted on by filing a lawsuit against it at the Supreme Judicial Court. The plaintiffs are: Christopher Anderson, president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council, Inc. (MHTC); Christopher Carlozzi, Massachusetts state director of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB); Richard Lord, president and chief executive officer of AIM; Eileen McAnneny, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation (MTF); and, Daniel O’Connell, president and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership (MACP).

They claim that the referendum language is “riddled with constitutional flaws,” with the MTHC’s Anderson remarking that “Amending the Constitution to achieve taxing and spending by popular vote is just a terrible idea, and could undo much of the good work that Massachusetts has done in terms of creating a successful economic climate.” But no matter what kinds of arguments they try to make, it seems like what they’re most afraid of is democracy. Let’s see how far they get with the SJC.

About That Opioid Epidemic…

More proof that the rising number of deaths from opioid abuse has more to do with corporate greed than any personal failings of individuals suckered into addiction by pliant doctors colluding with pharma sales reps. And also that those few drug companies that pay any penalty at all for their role in destroying communities across the state, get little more than a slap on the wrist. According to a press release by the office of Mass Attorney General Maura Healey, “An opioid manufacturer will pay $500,000 to resolve allegations that it engaged in a widespread scheme to unlawfully market its fentanyl spray and paid kickbacks to providers to persuade them to prescribe the product… Insys Therapeutics, Inc. misleadingly marketed Subsys, a narcotic fentanyl product that is sprayed under a patient’s tongue.” The money will be used to “help fund the AG’s prevention, education and treatment efforts.”

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 30-50 times more powerful than heroin. The company claimed its spray version of the drug was useful for treating “minor” pain in non-cancer patients—despite the fact that the FDC had only approved the drug for use in more severe pain in cancer patients. It then pushed its sales staff to give kickbacks to doctors in the form of “fees paid to speak to other health care providers about the product.”

Boondoggle in Progress?

When a public college gets involved in land deals, it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. Especially when that college is UMass—a troubled multi-campus institution whose leadership would rather engage in property speculation than fight the legislature for more money for public higher education.

In 2010, the school’s independent development wing, the UMass Building Authority (UMBA), bought the former Bayside Expo Center property after its owners went into foreclosure. According to the Dorchester Reporter, in August, the UMBA issued “a Request for Information (RFI) as it seeks out ideas for the ‘highest and best use’ of the former Bayside Expo Center site on Columbia Point in Dorchester with an eye toward transforming the 20-acre site into a ‘modern-day Harvard Square.’”

Last week, the newspaper reported that 16 developers have responded to the university’s request, including: Accordia Partners; American Campus Communities; Beacon Capital Partners; Bracken Development; Capstone Development Partners LLC & Samuels & Associates; Corcoran Jennison & BTUHWF Building Corp; Core Investment Inc.; Hunt Development Group, LLC & Drew Company Inc.; The HYM Investment Group, LLC; LendLease; Lincoln Property Company; Lupoli Companies; Rhino Capital & Ad Meliora; SKANSKA; University Student Living; and Waterstone Properties Group Inc. The Reporter says the UMass Building Authority “hopes to leverage public-private partnerships toward the massive mixed-use project.” Which usually means big public giveaways to corporations. One way or the other. Stay tuned.

Townie is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2017 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

AMAZON OCTAGON

Mass pols stand ready to fight each other for the right to bribe a multinational

October 10, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

At least 17 Massachusetts cities and towns are now preparing to do battle with each other—and hundreds more municipalities nationwide—for the dubious “honor” of “winning” the right to throw enough public money and tax breaks at Amazon to become the site of its new Headquarters 2 (HQ2). Despite the fact that such a “victory” will result in a worse regional housing crisis, provide mainly low-paying unstable jobs with subcontractors to working class natives without college degrees while tossing thousands of good jobs to software engineers from out of state, and give the vast corporation far too much power in state politics.

To prevent those unfortunate outcomes, here’s a non-exhaustive list of local, state, and federal public officials that should be contacted by constituents and reminded of their responsibilities to defend the public interest. Like, immediately. The deadline to submit HQ2 bids to Amazon is Oct 19. Careful readers will note that many of these bids are being pushed hardest by private developers and by “economic development” nonprofits and government offices that are basically run on behalf of private developers. Fancy that.

Local Government

BOSTON

Mayor Marty Walsh is all over this one. Fresh off of colluding with Gov. Charlie Baker to cut a secret deal to lavish tens of millions on General Electric to bring its once-and-future headquarters to the Hub, he’s back to his old tricks with Amazon. Four possible HQ2 sites are being considered, according to the Boston Globe: putative front-runner Suffolk Downs (partially in Revere), Widett Circle in South Boston, Beacon Yards in Allston, and an area adjacent to South Station.

REVERE

At a Sept 29 meeting, the Revere City Council Economic Development Sub-Committee reacted positively to the Suffolk Downs proposal presented by developer Thomas O’Brien, managing director of the Boston-based Hym Investment Group that owns the property. According to the Boston Herald, committee chair and council vice president Councilor Patrick M. Keefe Jr. then called Amazon the “1A plan” for the land.

SOMERVILLE

CommonWealth reports that Mayor Joe Curtatone is working on a proposal that would include buildings along the Orange Line from Assembly Row in Somerville to North Station in Boston. Which is, according to a DigBoston investigative series, perfectly in keeping with his track record of making a big stink when developers come to town, then ultimately giving them exactly what they want.

ABINGTON, ROCKLAND, and WEYMOUTH

Kyle Corkum, CEO and managing partner of LStar Communities, the company developing Union Point—the former US Naval Air Station—is pushing a bid for the property. According to Wicked Local, Weymouth Mayor Robert Hedlund is supportive of the bid. Rockland Selectmen Chairman Ed Kimball said, “Rockland will extend open arms to them and Abington will receive indirect benefits as well.”

HAVERHILL, LAWRENCE, METHUEN, AND NORTH ANDOVER

Haverhill Mayor James Fiorentini, Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera, Methuen Mayor Stephen Zanni, and North Andover Town Manager Andrew Maylor are all preparing a joint proposal featuring the former North Andover Lucent site—which I addressed in detail in my Sept 26 column—likely in tandem with other nearby sites.

BILLERICA, LOWELL, AND TEWKSBURY

According to the Lowell Sun, Lowell Mayor Edward Kennedy has said “we should at least take serious look” at the possibility of bringing Amazon to the area. Also, “City Manager Kevin Murphy said he has already directed his staff to begin working with the Middlesex 3 Coalition, an organization of nearby communities, to explore the possibilities.” Wicked Local reports that Billerica selectmen unanimously support the effort. Billerica Community Development Director Rob Anderson also supports the bid. One possible site is Riverview Technology Park at 495 Woburn St in Tewksbury.

NEW BEDFORD

The entire city council sent a letter to Mayor Jon Mitchell enjoining him to support an Amazon bid, according to the New Bedford Standard-Times, and he’s been in touch with Mass Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Jay Ash about pursuing a bid. The city has a 100 acres of a municipal golf course that has been slated for business development.

FALL RIVER

According to the Herald News, Fall River Office of Economic Development (FROED) Executive Vice President Ken Fiola—a key figure behind bringing a huge Amazon warehouse to the city—is pushing hard for the Amazon HQ2 contract but apparently doesn’t get along with Mayor Jasiel Correia II. WJAR-TV reports that his challenger in the upcoming election, Councilor Linda Pereira, is attacking Correia for resigning from the FROED board. So it’s not clear if Fall River will manage to field a proposal.

WORCESTER

The city council is unanimously in support of an Amazon deal but was not initially in agreement about whether HQ2 should be sited in Worcester or Boston. Councilor-at-Large Konnie Lukes has been the most vocal supporter of a Worcester site, pushed for council discussion about the deal, and requested that City Manager Ed Augustus Jr. prepare the application. According to MassLive.com, Augustus and some of the council were initially leaning toward supporting a Boston bid, but the city is now planning an independent bid for the contract. According to Worcester Magazine, “Councilor At-Large Kate Toomey said the south side of Worcester, by the intersection of routes 20 and 146, would be an ideal location” for HQ2.

WESTERN MASS

The Republican reports that Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno and the entire city council are supporting a bidwith other Connecticut River valley communities (the so-called “Knowledge Corridor”) in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Enfield, Connecticut, is a possible site. The main Bay State booster of the plan is Rick Sullivan, president and CEO of the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts.

State Government

GOV. CHARLIE BAKER

The governor said that the state won’t back a specific site and has urged local governments to “go for it.” Strongly in support of spending public money to bring the Amazon HQ2 to Massachusetts. According to the Boston Herald, Baker has recently stated that the Commonwealth’s request to Suffolk Superior Court to order Amazon to provide records for any third-party vendor who “stores or has stored” products in Massachusetts since 2012 was “routine” and shouldn’t affect an HQ2 deal. The order could result in a flood of similar legal actions around the US to collect back state sales taxes—which will probably tick off the tax-shy multinational.

SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT JAY ASH (D)

An important public servant, though not an elected one. Totally in support of an Amazon HQ2 deal for Massachusetts. In his role as chairman of the quasi-public agency MassDevelopment, he has already overseen a vote “to increase its contract with consulting firm VHB Inc. by up to $200,000 for a technical analysis” in support of the state’s Amazon bids. His bio brags that he “has played a leadership role in the recruitment and expansion of major employers, including Amazon, General Electric, IBM Watson Health, Kronos, and Siemens.”

SPEAKER ROBERT DELEO (D-WINTHROP)

Flacking for the Suffolk Downs site. Completely on board with dumping public money on Amazon and has “said he’s open to legislation that would include financial incentives to draw Amazon to the state regardless of the location,” according to the Boston Globe.

SEN. JOSEPH BONCORE (D-WINTHROP) AND REP. ADRIAN MADARO (D-EAST BOSTON)

Support the Suffolk Downs bid, according to the East Boston Times-Free Press.

SEN. CINDY FRIEDMAN (D-ARLINGTON) AND REP. MARC LOMBARDO (R-BILLERICA)

Support the Billerica, Lowell, Tewksbury bid, according to Wicked Local.

Federal Government

US REP. STEPHEN LYNCH (D-SOUTH BOSTON)

Supports the Weymouth proposal, according to the Boston Herald.

And a Few Cool Kids

REP. MIKE CONNOLLY (D-CAMBRIDGE), SEN. PAT JEHLEN (D-SOMERVILLE), REP. MARJORIE DECKER (D-CAMBRIDGE), AND SEN. JAMIE ELDRIDGE (D-ACTON)

Among the only politicians in the state to speak against spending public funds to “win” the Amazon HQ2 “contest.”

Rep. Connolly of Cambridge put his opinion succinctly on the matter in a Facebook chat to me Monday: “I was asked about it by some Cambridge residents last week and here’s what I told them: ‘I think it’s reasonable for cities and the state to want to be in the discussion, but at the end of the day, when/if I have to vote on something or support a proposal, I am not going to support a neoliberal approach to economic development, so if a deal is on the table I would be looking to scrutinize it in terms of whether it helps the folks who we represent in our communities and in the neighborhoods I represent right now.’”

Massachusetts needs more pols like these. Fast.

UPDATE 10/12/17: LYNN

A reader just pointed me to an article indicating that there is some interest in bringing Amazon to the “City of Sin.” According to The Daily Item, “Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy said the city is in no position to compete with Boston, Revere, Lawrence and Worcester to bring the world’s largest e-commerce company’s second headquarters to Massachusetts.” However, City Councilor-at Large and Rep. Daniel Cahill (D-Lynn), Senator and mayoral candidate Thomas M. McGee (D-Lynn), and Charles Patsios—the Swampscott developer who plans to transform the 68-acre former General Electric Co. Gear Works property into a $500 million neighborhood—are all supportive of a Lynn bid.

A PROTEST BY ANY OTHER NAME…

The best way to defeat the ultra right is to stop playing their game

August 15, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Street protest is a vital part of any genuinely democratic political system. But how and when people choose to demonstrate (or counterdemonstrate) determines the tactic’s relative success or failure. So in a situation like this week’s, when the ultra right is planning to hold a Boston rally in the wake of a similar event that caused the deaths of one left-winger and two cops in Charlottesville, what is the most effective way for the left — led by those political groups that believe in democracy, equality, human rights, and social justice — to grow their ranks while helping stop the reactionary drive for power in its tracks? At least in this corner of the US.

As I see it, there are three possible ways for the left to respond to public actions by right-wing extremists in the current moment. Here’s a quick look at each with my gloss.

1) Lead: Educate and organize for the long haul.

Organizing target: People who already agree with left ideas, and the huge middle ground of fence-sitters who will work with whichever side makes the strongest effort to talk to them.

With this approach, left organizers generally do not respond directly to particular ultra-right actions. Instead, they always seek to set the political agenda in society. To reach out to the vast sea of unorganized folks in a diverse array of communities and engage them in discussion and debate about matters like racism in American society. To build a culture that makes it impossible for the hard right to operate in the open. This option is often misconstrued by more militant left activists as “doing nothing,” but that is far from the case. Winning hearts and minds — especially in suburban communities that the left has failed to pay attention to for decades — is the most important political work of all, because it results in a strong political base and makes better political solutions to societal problems possible. It is also a majoritarian strategy because it seeks to build the largest possible social movement. And it has the added bonus of depriving the ultra right of publicity.

2) React: Hold counterdemonstrations every time the ultra right calls a public action.

Organizing target: The activist left.
This approach involves left organizers taking the bait and dropping longer-term organizing work to attempt to blunt ultra-right public initiatives. Which allows the ultra right to dictate both the terms of debate and the terrain of political struggle. Also, in the interest of speed, it forces the left to narrow its outreach to activists that are already pushing for its ideas. If repeated frequently, this option leads away from political solutions to societal crises by leaving power in the hands of the current capitalist duopoly, and it causes the ultra right to be perceived as more powerful than they actually are — since political strength is often judged by the size of a group’s enemies. Thus a rally of a few hundred will be taken much more seriously by many if thousands of people directly respond to it — ironically, assisting the ultra right’s PR and thence helping them to grow rather than shrink.

3) Provoke: Attempt to defeat the ultra right militarily.

Organizing target: The small number of left activists willing to take up arms against the right in this time and place, and the small number of allies who think that it’s a good idea to do so.

This approach involves giving the ultra right what they want most of all: violent street fights. It requires responding to the armed militias organized by the hard right with what amounts to left-wing militias. Which I think is a very bad idea in this place and time. Because it means activist militants must, by default, restrict their organizing to the very small groups of people willing to take up arms against their ultra-right antagonists in any given community. It tends to alienate huge numbers of people who don’t think it’s wise to try to fight fire with fire… and causes people who could have been organized into the left to be disorganized into fence-sitters. It also feeds the fantasy of actually beating the ultra right badly enough that they exit the political stage. Which is a highly unlikely outcome for the simple reason that right-wing militias have a big head start on any left imitators in both armament and training. Plus many militia members have military and police backgrounds, yet very few left-wingers have spent much time in either institution. Giving the ultra right far more allies in the police and military — and therefore in government. With those connections in place, a right-wing government like the Trump administration will certainly use any significant left violence as the excuse for a massive state crackdown on all of the ultra right’s political opponents. And even without such a crackdown, on a practical level, ultra-right recruitment increases every time they get in a street fight. Pursuing this course tends to make them stronger. Because they look badass whether they lose or win. If they lose, that feeds into their claim that “white people are oppressed by ‘Social Justice Warriors.’” If they win, it looks like history is on their side.

And history is definitely not right now. But if the left wants to ensure the victory of the ultra right in this period, pursuing the military option will virtually guarantee it.

That said, my favorite choice is obviously the first one. I hope that local left leaders will take my comments to heart, and that both the right and left will de-escalate their tactics enough to let traditional political activity supplant the looming downward spiral toward violent conflict. Because, if history is any guide, the latter path leads our society to a place we really don’t want to go.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director, and executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston. Copyright 2017 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

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THE LONG GAME: SANCTUARY CITIES FIGHT POINTS TO NEED FOR GLOBAL LABOR PROTECTIONS

Original flag image by Adbusters. Or Betsy Ross, depending on who you ask

March 7, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

Immigration enforcement is the responsibility of the federal government. Yet Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and related federal agencies often rely on local police to help round up undocumented immigrants for deportation. That problematic lies at the heart of the rising sanctuary cities movement. Local governments in opposition to increasingly inhumane federal immigration policy under the Trump administration are passing resolutions ordering police forces under their control to refuse to aid federal agencies seeking to detain and deport undocumented immigrants.

Immigrant advocates hope that creating large numbers of such sanctuary cities—plus sanctuary campuses and sanctuary religious institutions—will stop or at least slow the latest wave of deportations until the US finally develops a more fair and rational immigration policy.

That’s not going to happen without popular support. And all too many Americans have not been provided with the information that will allow them to make an informed decision on the matter.

Citizens who back slowing or stopping immigration do so because they believe immigrants “steal jobs” from Americans, don’t pay taxes, and/or increase crime. Positions that are not borne out by major research studies. But if they looked more closely at what has actually happened on the immigration front since the early 1990s, there’s every possibility that they would join a groundswell of support for progressive immigration policy… and for something else besides: support for strong labor legislation at the national and international levels.

So it’s imperative that nativist Americans begin to understand the structural crisis that led to the current situation. The biggest precipitating factor was a so-called “trade” treaty signed in 1993 by President Bill Clinton called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It went into effect in 1994.

According to labor journalist David Bacon, NAFTA was the result of a major lobbying effort by American multinational corporations with support from CEOs in Canada and Mexico. It was sold to Congress as a remedy to the supposed dilemma of migration from Mexico (and points south) to the US. The argument was that by eliminating “barriers to trade” like tariffs and taxes on major corporations, profits would rise, the economic boats of all three countries would be lifted, more good jobs would be produced, and immigration would slow to a trickle. Because there would be no reason for anyone to leave home.
As often happens in politics, this turned out to be a pack of lies. Removing the so-called trade barriers meant that US multinationals were able to flood the Mexican market with cheap goods and services. Goods and services that Mexicans had once produced for themselves either in Mexican-owned companies or in a robust public sector that included a strong nationalized oil industry.

The Mexican economy went into immediate freefall—throwing over one million people out of work. Then the American multinationals were able to move more manufacturing operations to Mexico than ever before—where they were free of pesky labor unions and tax burdens—resulting in the loss of over 682,000 good American jobs by 2010 according to the Economic Policy Institute. Corporations that kept major factories and farms in the US were free to take advantage of a seemingly endless flood of undocumented immigrant workers who are rarely able to organize into labor unions—since one call to the feds ensures the deportation of any “troublemakers.” Canada was also badly hurt by NAFTA. Billionaire CEOs got even richer, and extended their political power significantly in all three countries.

And here’s the irony: It is precisely those Americans who lost their jobs to NAFTA and other neoliberal schemes like it who voted for Donald Trump in significant enough numbers in key states to ensure his victory.

That’s why any successful movement for immigration justice must be linked directly to the most far-sighted sectors of the labor movement in the US and abroad. The key to ending the fight over immigration is to enshrine strong labor rights worldwide; so that major corporations will no longer be able to pit workers in the US against workers in other countries in what’s been aptly called a “race to the bottom.” Spread that message widely enough, and the nativist movement will evaporate—aside from a small core of outright racists. Because if workers can make a decent living wherever they live, then immigration will cease to be an issue anywhere. And when people do migrate to the future US once a fair immigration regime is finally in place, it will be much easier to do so legally and permanently.

Which is the kind of world we all want, yes? One in which the rights of human beings to make a decent living and to move about the planet freely are respected more than the rights of corporations to maximize their profits.

This column was originally written for the Beyond Boston regional news digest show—co-produced by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and several area public access television stations.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director and senior editor of DigBoston.

Check out the Apparent Horizon Podcast on:

iTunes, Google Play Music, Blubrry, Stitcher, TuneIn, and YouTube

GENERAL STRIKE: IS THE TRUMP VICTORY SPARKING THE RETURN OF LABOR’S MOST POWERFUL TACTIC?

NYC (1970)

February 22, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

You know we live in interesting times when general strikes get discussed matter-of-factly in an American big city newspaper. A subject which would have only been raised in a publication like the Boston Globe in recent decades to attack it.

But to give the Globe’s Shirley Leung—an occasional target of my ire—credit where it’s due, she did just that in her recent column about three calls for general strikes against the policies of the Trump administration. One fairly small, hastily organized “Day Without Immigrants” strike last Thursday, and two upcoming one-day strike calls: “A Day Without a Woman” on March 8 (International Women’s Day), and a second “Day Without Immigrants” on May 1 (May Day, the international workers’ holiday) that are likely to be much larger affairs.

It’s fairly obvious why Leung is suddenly interested in the strongest tactic in labor’s arsenal. She’s a bit of a feminist and was supportive of Hillary Clinton, and like many people fitting that description is now considering political action that would have been unthinkable for her only three months agone. That’s fine. She gets some things wrong, but interviews some experts that know their stuff, and does her audience a service by discussing the concept of a general strike at all.

To review, a strike occurs when working people withhold their labor for any reason. A general strike occurs when massive numbers of workers from more than one industrial sector withhold their labor in a city, state, region, or nation. The difference is that a strike is typically called to demand redress in a single workplace or industry. A general strike is called to cause serious economic disruption aimed at bringing corporations and the government to their knees on a single issue, a group of issues, or even to overthrow the current political economic system itself. US strikes are usually called by labor unions, general strikes by coalitions of labor unions and left-wing political groups.

The problem for organizers considering the tactic is that general strikes are basically illegal. At least for labor unions. Leung briefly mentions that the Oakland General Strike of 1946 was the “last” general strike. But she didn’t say why. Turns out that the main reason there have been no “official” general strikes since then is because the Oakland action was part of the massive five-million worker national strike wave of 1945-46—in total, the largest sustained protest of any kind in American history. The strike wave won some victories. Then triggered a political backlash by a coalition of major corporations and right-wing legislators, leading directly to the passage of the anti-labor federal Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The law specified a number of political economic tactics unions were henceforth banned from using, including: jurisdictional strikes, wildcat strikes, solidarity or political strikes, secondary boycotts, secondary and mass picketing. Long story short, those types of strikes, boycotts, and pickets translate to a general strike. Not that the many general strikes prior to 1947 were treated as legal either, but after 1947 there was little ambiguity as to their legality.

Does that mean that the American labor movement just rolled over? No. It took decades for corporations and their political allies to crush it down to the diminished state it languishes in today—when only 10.7 percent of the US workforce is unionized (down from a high of almost 35 percent in 1954). And does that mean that there have been no actions like a general strike since 1946? Again, no. There have been subsequent general strikes if you include the major wildcat strikes of the 1970s and accept that the 2006 immigrant boycott (that Leung does mention) was essentially a general strike in some cities.

Wildcats are strikes organized by union workers against their employers … and two forces that often collude with bosses: the government and their own union leadership. The most recent major wave of wildcat strikes occurred in the 1970s. Some of them were large enough in some locales to be considered general strikes—especially where strikers drew support from other unions. Particularly the 1970 National US Postal Workers Wildcat Strike (200,000 workers in 15 states), the 1970 Teamsters Wildcat Strike (500,000 workers, mostly east of the Mississippi River), and the 1974 Wildcat Miners Strike (26,000 workers in West Virginia and Virginia). Some of the wildcats dragged on for weeks. For comparison, the Oakland General Strike involved 100,000 workers over a couple of days (although it wasn’t called as a traditional strike, and had elements of a wildcat).

As for the 2006 May Day immigrant action, “The Great American Boycott,” its title in Spanish was “El Gran Paro Estadounidense”—meaning “The Great American Strike.” In practice, as it involved multi-industry boycotts and strike actions, the 2006 mass walkout for immigrant rights can be viewed as a general strike. Over 1.5 million people participated. But since they were mostly immigrants, many American citizens, Leung included, don’t think of it as a strike at all. Certainly it wasn’t as strong as the 1945-46 strike wave, or the 1970s wildcat strikes. But in immigrant cities like LA and Chicago it definitely had significant political and economic impact. If it had gone on longer than a few days, many citizens would likely have felt those effects nationwide.

So the question is: Will the upcoming one-day strike calls have as powerful a political economic effect as a classic general strike? Probably not. In that case, will they be as powerful as a major wildcat strike? Not just yet. How about the 2006 Great American Boycott by immigrants? Will they be that big? That’s probably the sweet spot. The recent Women’s Marches were able to pull an estimated minimum of 3.3 million people out on a weekend when many participants weren’t working. Do a third of those numbers on a workday, and you’ve reached the lower estimate for the 2006 immigrant strike.

Frankly, both the March 8 and May 1 strike calls could be big. Both are aimed at constituencies that have demonstrated ability to turn out in large numbers. And neither call is led by labor unions that can’t easily call general strikes; so there is an opening to do so. But they will only be powerful to the extent that they threaten the established political order. And there the differences between the two events become clear. The March 8 Day Without a Woman strike is being called by some of the same forces that organized the Women’s Marches in January. Forces that, as I’ve previously written, are directly connected to the neoliberal Clintonite wing of the Democratic Party. Folks who just lost an election because they refused to put working people’s needs over corporate profits.

But the May 1 Day Without Immigrants strike call is being organized by Movimiento Cosecha—a fast-growing coalition of militant young left-wing immigrant organizers. They are potentially limited by their focus on immigrant communities. However, they were recently screwed by the Democratic Party and the Obama administration—which both failed to respond to their demand that all 11 million undocumented immigrants be granted legal status before Trump came into office. So they are less likely to heed the siren call of Democratic leaders to tone down their protests when they become inconvenient for the Dems’ corporate backers, and therefore far more likely to actually build their May Day effort into something approaching a general strike than the March 8 organizers are.

Their call to action makes that intent quite clear:

One day is just the beginning of a season of strikes and boycotts. We know that each time we strike for a day, we will build power. And the more days we strike, the stronger we will feel. The more desperate those in power become. The more the elite will want business to return to normal. They will be forced to figure out a way to give us permanent protection. And in the process, we will win the dignity and respect that we deserve and demand.

Ultimately, debates over whether major work stoppages are “real” general strikes aren’t the point. What matters is “boots on the ground,” and the ability of organizers to translate their numbers into political and economic gains. Any coalition that can pull millions out of work and into the streets against the Trump administration will write a new chapter in both American political and labor history. Which could be just the game changer our incipient movements for democracy need. But if there turns out to be more than one such coalition, so much the better.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director and senior editor of DigBoston.

Check out the Apparent Horizon Podcast on:

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HOW TO FIND A DECENT PROGRESSIVE ACTIVIST GROUP

Photo by Chris Faraone

February 6, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

So you went to one of the recent big anti-Trump actions, and you want to become a progressive activist. Not just vote every year or two. Great. But there are dozens of major left activist organizations and hundreds of minor ones working on a host of issues at all levels. Which one to join?

Politics is a minefield. No two ways about it. And the group (or groups) you choose to work with will determine both the course of your life going forward and, in some sense, the fate of the nation. How do you even begin to decide?

I recommend starting with a gut check. What issues are most important to you? Do you want to take on a big fight like getting Trump and his rogue’s gallery of white nationalists out of power? A smaller fight, like expanding public transportation in your region? Or a huge fight, like saving humanity from global warming?

Once you’ve thought deeply about where your political interests lie, search for organizations that are taking on the issues you care most about. Look hard. Do deep web dives. Ask everyone you trust that shares your values. Then ask yourself a series of questions like the following:

1) Is the group run democratically? Far too many activist organizations—especially on the national level—are not. If all edicts in the group seem to come from top officials, and none of the important decisions are made by the members, you’re probably barking up the wrong political tree.

2) Is the group led by elites? Look at the staff, elected officials (if any), and board. Do you see lots of rich people and CEOs? Lots of Ivy League connections? Lots of big (and therefore corporate) foundations? And you’re a progressive and want to rein in corporate power? Find another group.

3) Is the group’s membership and (more importantly) leadership diverse? Do you see people who look like you and a broad array of your friends in the organization? If not, you may want to look elsewhere.

4) Is the group’s agenda transparent or opaque? What does the organization stand for? Is it developing its own positions democratically, or does it seem to be taking marching orders from some unseen higher level? Always look for a clear statement of its politics, values, and action plan—and an indication of who calls the shots in the group. Such information should be front and center in outreach materials, websites, and social media presences. If it’s not, keeping moving.

5) Is the group connected to the Democratic Party? You’ll need to think very carefully about this question, because it determines where you’ll come down in the debate on the future of the American left. Do you want to be connected to the populist left wing of the party? The neoliberal corporate wing of the party (that got the country into the mess we’re in)? Do you want to break with the party and form a better left party? Or join the extra-parliamentary left that doesn’t believe in electoral politics at all? Definitely study before you leap.

6) Is the group purely reactive? Does it engage its members in political discussion and debate, determine a strategy, take action, analyze the action, course correct, and move on to achieve meaningful political change. Or does it follow various dog whistles from powerful societal institutions and various media without really developing its own analysis, and encourage members to endlessly engage in aimless street protest. Eschew, if the latter.

7) Is the group a cult? A loaded question, yes. But one worth thinking about. Political cults do exist. If any organization you approach starts putting super heavy pressure on you to join them, to spend all your available waking hours working for them for free, and to disassociate from your friends and family … run.

Otherwise, if you don’t see a group you like, start your own! In general, keep your head about you and use your common sense. Avoid well-off wannabe revolutionaries, radical chic hipsters, and faux radicals who encourage your mouth to write checks to cops, intelligence agencies, and the military that your ass can’t cash, and you’ll be fine. Have fun fighting the power. And let’s be careful out there.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director and senior editor of DigBoston.

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A QUESTION OF STRATEGY: WILL WOMEN’S MARCH LEADERS HELP BUILD A DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT OR JUST PUT THE DEMS BACK IN POWER?

Photo by Scott Murry

January 24, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The Boston Women’s March for America was a tremendous success by any metric. Likely the largest political demonstration in the city’s history, its estimated 175,000 attendees made it big enough to dwarf even many national demonstrations of the last many years. Which shows two important things. First, there are a great many Massachusetts residents ready to fight to bring down the Trump administration. Second, the state’s population is strongly in favor of women’s rights—and a number of other positions mentioned in the event’s mission statement, including: racial justice, economic justice, human rights, climate justice, and religious freedom. So, credit where credit is due, march organizers did a wonderful job of reading the political moment, and turning out the broad left against a clear and present threat to democracy … in the form of a triumphalist hard right wing of the Republican Party.

However, the local march and hundreds of related actions across the US last weekend—up to and including the main Washington, DC march—all had an inherent political flaw that’s going to be hard to overcome. That is, their organizers appear to have no follow-up plan beyond mobilizing voters to get the Democrats back in power.

This is because the progressive nonprofits and labor unions behind the marches themselves have no high-level strategy beyond that same goal. Which is why many of them could not even support Bernie Sanders, their party’s credible left alternative in last year’s election. And why the Dems are not much better than the Repubs on a host of key issues—and in some cases, as with the Trans Pacific Partnership that President Trump just shot down as a first order of business, they are worse. Because the organizations that comprise the progressive wing of the Democrats, and provide most of its grassroots muscle, continue to refuse to challenge the still-dominant pro-corporate Clintonite wing of the party for control of its platform.

Given that problematic background, it’s easy to understand why the marches were essentially transformed into giant launchpads for the candidacies of key Democratic politicians for the 2018 and 2020 elections. In Boston, for example, the main speaker was Sen. Elizabeth Warren—a clear contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, having stood down in the recent election and consolidated her power base. Other rising Democratic politicians like Mass Attorney General Maura Healey, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, and Boston City Councilor and City Council President Michelle Wu also mounted the podium—and none could ask for a better campaign kickoff for their next races. Whatever those races may be.

But electing more Democrats to office is not going to solve the problems this nation is facing. Especially if the party continues to be led elitist technocrats who fake left, but break right on all the issues that matter to its populist wing.

An otherwise decent progressive like Warren will keep pulling her punches on effective policy prescriptions like single-payer national healthcare, and continue to defend Obamacare when she herself has written in favor of single-payer as the “most obvious solution” to our health crisis. Because she doesn’t have the support of party leadership to take on corporate power.

A union-backed mayor like Walsh will continue to base his economic policies on the simple conceit of attracting as many major corporations to Boston as possible—as he did by supporting the GE Boston Deal—in the likely vain hope that doing so will somehow result in more decent jobs for his working and middle-class constituents. Instead of creating public jobs programs and building large amounts of public housing like big city Democratic pols from the 1930s to the 1960s. Pushed by an ascendant and militant labor movement for much of that period. Because, again, he doesn’t have the support of party leadership for such policies. And because today’s union and nonprofit leaders have been unwilling to push Democrats to back the democratic socialist policies that many of them privately believe in.

So that’s the strategic quandary that progressive Democrats of the type who just pulled off huge and successful mass mobilizations find themselves in. They know perfectly well that a society run by and for the rich is incompatible with the fairness and justice they seek. They know that we cannot solve all the dire problems facing America by handing the reins of power to the CEOs—as both major parties have been doing for decades—and hoping for the best. And they know that the best organizing isn’t top-down, but is instead horizontal and, well, democratic.

Yet even when they pull millions into a great event like the marches against President Trump, they remain afraid to let the grassroots they just inspired to action run the political movement they hope to build. And as long as that cycle continues, the Democratic Party might indeed return to power by 2020. But all the marches in the world won’t bring true democracy to the United States.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

Check out the Apparent Horizon Podcast on:
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HARD DRUG TRUTHS: END MANDATORY MINIMUM DRUG SENTENCES

January 10, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

The opioid crisis is dire enough without adding insult to injury. With almost 12,000 deaths from overdoses in Massachusetts since the year 2000—increasing sharply in recent years with fentanyl-laced heroin hitting the streets—the human cost to users, their families, and our communities is already tremendous. But thanks to mandatory minimum sentencing for drug-related criminal offenses that cost is far higher than it needs to be.

A bit of history is in order. Decades back, sentencing decisions for such offenses were generally made by individual judges—who could then lower or remove jail time, or order an alternative sentence to a drug treatment facility, for non-violent offenders convicted of simple possession and the like.

The passage of the Controlled Substances Penalties Amendments Act by Congress in 1984—followed by a number of related laws on the federal and state level—took that power away from the courts and set mandatory minimum sentences that could not be modified by judges. Prisons around the country began to fill with drug offenders. And many nonviolent offenders ended up doing more time than violent offenders like members of major drug cartels.

Worse still, racism was baked into the new system, with drugs like the crack form of cocaine sold in poorer communities of color drawing far longer sentences than drugs like the powder cocaine sold in wealthier white communities. The arrest rate for people of color has remained consistently higher as well. According to the state Sentencing Commission, Massachusetts imprisons Black defendants eight times more than white defendants. Latino defendants are sent up almost five times more.

Then, in 1996, OxyContin—a synthetic opiate pain medication—came on the market in 80 mg pill form. It was developed by a small Connecticut pharmaceutical company called Purdue Pharma—an early pioneer … not in synthesizing oxycodone, the active ingredient in OxyContin which had originally been developed in Germany in 1916, but in something more insidious: the direct marketing of drugs to doctors. According to Pacific Standard, Purdue doubled its sales staff in the first four years of the OxyContin rollout. That staff developed a database that identified doctors who prescribed pain medication more heavily than others. They focused their sales effort on those doctors—encouraging them to overprescribe the medication for a wide variety of conditions. In 2000, the company released a 160 mg pill specifically aimed at users that had developed tolerance to opioids—which became the wildly popular street drug we know today. Crushed and sniffed by tens of thousands of users in the Bay State alone. And so, by 2010, OxyContin accounted for over one-third of American painkiller sales.

Most of you know the rest of the story. The legions of newly addicted Oxy users eventually ran out of prescriptions, and turned to whatever they could get to replace it—inevitably leading many of them to heroin. A sane government would’ve stepped in early on in this process, shut a company like Purdue down, and significantly expanded public funding for solid treatment and recovery facilities for the drug’s many casualties. But that’s not what happened. Instead, Purdue was making over $3 billion a year on OxyContin by 2010, and had a lock on legal sales of the drug until its patent expired in 2013. Even as public funding for treatment got cut.

Meanwhile, street sales of Oxy and the resulting spike in heroin sales led to a whole new wave of nonviolent offenders sent to prison for years with mandatory minimum sentences.

Unfortunately, action to reform such strict sentencing laws has been slow to come at the federal level and here in the Commonwealth. With a new session of the state legislature just beginning, there are no new reform bills to recommend. But it’s reasonable to expect the main reform bill of the last session, An Act to Repeal Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Laws for Drug Offenses, will be reintroduced this time around. The bill would repeal all mandatory minimums for drug offenses and let courts impose sentences that fit the crimes.

It’s ironic that, according to WBUR, “several other states, including conservative states, have overhauled their sentencing laws” while ostensibly progressive Massachusetts lags behind. But thanks to the work of grassroots organizations like Jobs Not Jails and the Mass Organization for Addiction Recovery, high level officials like Mass Senate President Stanley Rosenberg and Chief Justice Ralph Gants of the Mass Supreme Judicial Court have recently gone on record in support of mandatory minimum reform.

That’s great, but without voters across Mass putting pressure on state legislators it could still be years before the needed reform passes. So, the best thing that readers can do to help stop this devastating outgrowth of the already tragic opioid crisis is to watch for the new mandatory minimum reform bill and join advocates to demand that your state reps and senators do the right thing and pass it.

This column was originally written for the Beyond Boston regional news digest show—co-produced by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and several area public access television stations.

Apparent Horizon is syndicated by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is BINJ’s network director.

Copyright 2017 Jason Pramas. Licensed for use by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and media outlets in its network.

Check out the Apparent Horizon Podcast on:

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UNITED WE STAND: AN ADMONITION FOR 2017

January 4, 2017

BY JASON PRAMAS @JASONPRAMAS

As another calendar year begins, it is my custom to prognosticate about what I think is most important for my audience to consider in the months to come. Last year at this time, I asked readers if they wanted to live in a democracy—and I encouraged those who did to join organizations willing to defend and expand the democratic lifeways our society has left.

But how one thinks about democracy depends on where one stands politically. So this year, now that the 2016 election drama has played out, I think it’s worth reflecting on how to unite everyone who believes in American democracy around the cause of saving it. Given that people with very different politics still share a common vision of democracy at a gut level. Though they agree on very little else.

For example, most people who voted for President-elect Donald Trump—outright fascists, theocrats, and incipient monarchs excepted—believe that they did so to defend and expand democracy. Most people who voted for also-ran Hillary Clinton—including former Bernie Sanders supporters who held their noses and took one for the team—believe the same thing. Same goes for Libertarians, Greens, smaller left and right third parties, and a vast array of independents. Most everyone believes that people should have some say over political and economic decisions that affect their daily lives.

However, there is one significant group that doesn’t seem particularly interested in democracy (although they often say otherwise). The “good and the great.” The rich and powerful. The corporate leaders, major investors, and top politicians who comprise the oligarchy that controls the commanding heights of American politics and economics. Trump and Clinton represent different factions of it. And until popular movements reign in that oligarchy, nothing significant will change for the better.

Doing so will have to be a broad effort. Because neither the left nor the right can win this one alone. And removing an oligarchy is no easy task. As such, here’s what I think each political crew should do toward that goal.

Democrats: I wrote my basic prescription for you all a few weeks back … reform your party. Do us all a favor, take it away from Wall Street operatives like Clinton and let the grassroots membership run the show (read up on the midterm 1978 Democratic National Conference for some ideas). Give working Americans someone decent to vote for and there won’t be another repeat of the recent debacle anytime soon.

Republicans: If you’re serious about the small government thing, let’s see some grassroots action against the military-industrial complex, corporate welfare, and the national security state. Also, fight to keep government funding for science and medicine in place. [Evangelical Republicans, keep Matthew 19:24 in mind.]

Greens: Get more of your members elected to local and state offices. The better to develop a core of experienced public servants, and eventually field national candidates who have some hope of striking hard bargains with the major parties to win significant reforms like national health care. Or even some Congressional seats.

Libertarians: Same as the Greens (understanding that you will generally oppose big federal programs). But unseating some of the current crop of racist and nativist Repub elected officials would be super helpful.

Smaller parties, “fusion” parties, and proto-parties: Get larger. We really need to muddle our way to a multiparty parliamentary system.

Non-voters of various political stripes: Even if you don’t believe in electoral politics, or just don’t see a point in voting, there’s still plenty you can do. Help rebuild local and regional democratic institutions like neighborhood associations, benefit societies, community service organizations, clubs, co-operatives, labor unions, and forward-thinking religious groups.

That said, everyone should work in concert to create a more democratic culture. A culture where people don’t just accept decisions handed down to them from on high in any sphere of life, but question them. And demand to be part of making them.

We will debate over every conceivable policy while we build that culture. And that’s OK. In a democratic society, the most important thing is that we’ll be able to have those debates. But without such basic human solidarity—such commitment to “hang together” rather than “hang separately,” as Benjamin Franklin probably quipped—democracy in America is finished.

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