From The Dish: Why Not Just Provide The Pill Over The Counter?

In a post about the contraception - and how the dust up over the Hobby Lobby decision might be minimized it was easier to obtain - and author points out one of the reasons why doctors, public health officials and pharmaceutical companies want to continue to require prescriptions to get them.

It's good for business.

- Click here for the post.

“Doctors regularly hold women’s birth control prescriptions hostage, forcing them to come in for exams,” wrote Stephanie Mencimer in a Mother Jones piece about her own doctor doing so. Dr. [Jeffrey] Singer described as it doctors extorting pay for a “permission slip” to get the same medication over and over again. Feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte says doctors use “the pill as bait” to make sure women come in once a year. Both doctors and public health officials publicly worry that women won’t receive annual cervical cancer and sexually transmitted infection (STI) screenings without such coercion. How much of this concern is motivated by profit, how much by paternalism, is hard to say. …

It’s not just some doctors and medical groups who want to keep things status quo. Pharmaceutical companies also gain from it. OTC sales “would drive down the prices substantially,” says Singer. Drugmakers can get higher prices from insurance companies than they could in a competitive contraceptive market. … Yet the pharmaceutical industry is the only entity with standing to challenge the prescription status of current birth control pills. In order to initiate the switch from prescription to nonprescription, a drug maker must approach the FDA.

This is a good illustration of the relationship between interest groups and executive agencies. File this under sub-governments and iron triangles. It gets to the heart of what really drives decision making.

The emerging field of political intelligence - the fastest growing field you've never heard of

The Dish had a recent post telling how to profit from boring subcommittee meetings.

Hire yourself out to large businesses who want quick information about what is happening in these meetings.

From Mother Jones:

As Wall Street has pursued ever more complex ways to make a buck, the political-intelligence industry has boomed, bringing in $402 million in 2009, according to Integrity Research Associates, which tracks the PI sector. That's still small potatoes compared to the $3.3 billion lobbying industry, but it has caught the eye of critics who worry that it amounts to selling special access to the public's business. "This is basically the kind of thing that America hates," says former lobbyist-turned-reformer Jack Abramoff.

Heather Podesta, a corporate lobbyist who once proudly sewed a scarlet "L" on her dress at a Democratic convention party, recalls the moment several years ago when she realized political intel had taken on a life of its own. Hedge funders had packed the audience at a Senate hearing on asbestos legislation. They had no interest in the policy implications; they just wanted to find out first so they could place their bets for or against the asbestos makers. "The whole thing," Podesta tells me at the power-lunch staple Charlie Palmer, "was just so sleazy." Yet so long as they don't veer into insider trading or Abramoff-style shenanigans, the political-intelligence firms aren't breaking any laws. "All they're doing is discovering the information and conveying it," concedes Abramoff, whose influence-peddling schemes swept up a half-dozen Republican lawmakers and landed him in prison. "I'm not even sure if you made it illegal there's any way to enforce it. It's ingenious."

The political-intelligence industry began to take shape in the early 1980s. As federal regulatory power expanded, big business wanted to know what happened in obscure subcommittee hearings—and didn't want to wait for the next day's papers to read about it. In 1984, investment banker Ivan Boesky hired lobbyists to attend committee hearings about a big oil merger and report back to him. It paid off: Boesky made a cool $65 million just by finding out first and buying low. "Investors started to realize that there was money to be made by knowing what was going on in Washington and knowing it as quickly as possible," says Michael Mayhew, the founder of Integrity Research Associates.

Click here for a link to Integrity Research Associates.

From Texas Tribune: Regulators Face Criticism Over Earthquake Monitoring

The Texas Tribune points out that increased earthquake activity has led to investigations in other states, but not in Texas.

StateImpact Texas wonders if this is because regulatory agencies in the state are controlled by the oil and gas industry.

Is The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas driven by politics?

The Dallas Observer argues that it is, and that this reality is driving away top researchers:

Since the taxpayer-funded agency's creation in 2007, backed by Governor Rick Perry and Lance Armstrong, it has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in grants. But its top talent is fleeing the agency, characterizing its selection process as unscientific at best, and political favoritism at worst.

The agency's former chief scientific officer, Dr. Alfred Gilman -- a pharmacology professor emeritus at Dallas' UT Southwestern and a Nobel laureate -- worries about fast-tracked grants approved by the agency without scientific peer review.

Lately, the agency has focused on "commercialization projects" -- an injection of capital to speed research down the drug-development pipeline. Which would be good, the defecting scientists say, if the projects chosen didn't carry more than just a whiff of politics. Some seven CPRIT scientists handed in letters of resignation last week, according to the Associated Press.

"You may find that it was not worth subverting the entire scientific enterprise -- and my understanding was that the intended goal of C.P.R.I.T. was to fund the best cancer research in Texas -- on account of this ostensibly new, politically driven, commercialization-based mission," wrote scientist Brian Dynlacht in his resignation letter.

We covered the research institute in GOVT 2306 and looked through the section in Article III of the Texas Constitution which established it in 2007. It was one of a large numbers of sections within the constitution that authorizes new areas where unique funds drawn from the sale of binds can be spent on items not normally covered under the Texas budget.

The controversy is whether political pressure is being placed in the scientists peer reviewing research proposals. Some given low marks have been reconsidered. Critics wonder if the process has become corrupted by the promise of commercial profits enabled by tax-payer funded research.

Follow the latest news from Google here.

Congressional Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Caucus

A telling story from Open Secrets. Four leading military contractors who stand to benefit from the development of a new fighter have contributed just over $300,000 to the campaigns of 48 House members who have joined the Congressional Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Caucus. The bulk of the money is going to the co-chairs of the caucus. Considering the amount of money spent on the program, the contributions seem tiny. A potentially wise investment.

One of the co-chairs is Kay Granger who represents a district surrounding Fort Worth, where these fighters will very likely be built. Other members of the caucus also represent district that will receive benefits from the program, as well as jobs and something to crow about each election.

Revolving Door: Former Members of the 111th Congress

From OpenSecrets.Org, a page devoted to determining what careers former members of the 111th Congress are pursuing. It's worth looking at those who are now working with organizations whose interests they developed expertise on while in Congress.

The Revolving Door -- Peter Orszag and Citibank

From Deal Book:

Wall Street has long stacked its ranks with Washington types.

It is the elephant in the room of White House grand bargains: after building a reputation and Rolodex in politics, the wise man moves on — or in many cases, back — to the financial industry to make a killing.

A decade ago, a former Treasury secretary, Robert E. Rubin, left the Clinton administration to become a senior adviser and board member at Citigroup — collecting a $10 million a year paycheck with no management responsibility.

On Thursday, Peter R. Orszag, President Obama’s first budget director and a protégé of Mr. Rubin, followed in his mentor’s footsteps and joined Citi’s investment banking group as a vice chairman. Mr. Orszag, 41, is the second cabinet official to join Citi this month, and his appointment comes days after the Treasury Department’s $10.5 billion stock offering helped further extricate the bailed out bank from Washington.

- Commentary from James Fallows.
- A response.

Does the Oil Lobby Own Government Regulators?

Perhaps.