America’s Lawyer E92: The state of Florida has decided that working outdoors in the Florida heat doesn’t entitle workers to water breaks, and they recently passed legislation that bans mandatory breaks for workers. President Biden has launched a task force to tackle corporate price gouging, but it may not be enough to ease prices for consumers. And if you think you’re paying too much at the pharmacy for your medication, just wait until you hear how much it is actually costing you. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Hi, I’m Mike Papantonio, and this is America’s Lawyer. The state of Florida has decided that working outdoors in Florida heat doesn’t entitle workers to have water breaks. They’ve actually passed legislation that bans mandatory breaks for workers. President Biden, well, he’s launched a task force to tackle corporate price gouging, but it may not be enough to ease the prices for consumers. It’s a start, and that’s what’s important. And if you think you’re paying too much at the pharmacy for your medication, just wait until you find out how much it actually costs you. All that and more. It’s coming up. Don’t go anywhere. America’s Lawyer starts right now.
Dozens of outdoor workers die every year in the state of Florida due to heat. But the fact didn’t stop lawmakers in from passing legislation that actually bans mandatory water breaks for workers. I’ve got Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins with me to talk about this. Farron, you’re gonna have to take this story because I read it and I swear I’m not joking, I thought that this was Onion. I thought that this was some type of comedy story, some Onion story where they’re trying to say, has it really gotten that crazy? Talk about this.
Farron Cousins: Unfortunately, it really has gotten that crazy here in the state of Florida, because yeah, the state legislature, the state House, state Senate worked together and passed this legislation saying that we are going to ban any city, or locale, municipality, whatever it is, you cannot enact any law that says your outdoor workers have to have mandatory water and rest breaks, which means mandatory breaks in the state of Florida for these outdoor workers are officially illegal. You cannot mandate those breaks in the state.
Mike Papantonio: In other words, you would’ve counties that would say, look, you’ve got workers coming in and they’re picking citrus. They gotta have so much time because it’s 120 degrees in those fields or wherever it might be, picking strawberries, construction workers on top of houses, putting on roofs.
Farron Cousins: And it has to vary county by county, especially here in Florida, because we do have such wild weather, depending on where you are in the state, we’re very different.
Mike Papantonio: I really, I’m serious when I tell you that when I read this, I couldn’t make sense of it. That’s how bizarre this is to me. Can you make sense of it?
Farron Cousins: No. And that is what is confusing about it is what’s the motivation behind this?
Mike Papantonio: Texas did it.
Farron Cousins: I know and Texas is almost even worse than Florida in terms of working outdoors in the heat. The only thing I can come to the conclusion of is that this is a group of individuals who passed this bill that have never actually had to work outside in the state of Florida, other than maybe cutting their own grass every couple of weeks. They’re not people that have actually gone out and done the work. And to be honest, I think that is a big problem with politics in general, whether it’s local, state, federal level, is we need more people that have actually gone out there and worked manual labor jobs. We need people that understand what it’s like to struggle and can bring that experience to politics. Because if you’ve never experienced it, you can’t appreciate it and understand it. And that’s what’s happening.
Mike Papantonio: It’s bigger than that to me. It’s bigger than that to me, Farron. Who would say, I’m gonna put my name on this? I’m gonna vote for this? You understand, it’s that you’re saying you cannot take a break in 120 degree heat, working on top of a roof. You can’t have a special cooling break. Now, here’s the real problem. The real problem is that administration after administration has been telling OSHA, do something about this kind of thing. You can do it. If you’re OSHA, you can come up and this has been kicking around for what, three presidents, where three presidents have been saying if you don’t get OSHA to do their job, because now they’re owned by corporations, you know. I mean, corporations own OSHA. OSHA is useless. But they would at least say to these folks at OSHA, come up with some standards that you can enforce. Right now, there are no standards. So it allows these folks to write this kind of legislation. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And in their legislation, I will say that they do point out like, hey, we’re gonna defer, follow the federal regulations on this. But they added that knowing there’s no federal regulations on this. So they did kind of put that in there as kind of a cover yourself moment, like, we’re gonna let the federal government handle this. And then the federal government says, well, we asked them, they’ve done nothing.
Mike Papantonio: 34 people a year die just in Florida from heat strokes related to this kinda stuff. And even in light of that, they go forward with this legislation. I just, some stories. You’ve been doing this with me for 25 years and some stories I just can’t get my arms around. This is one of ’em. I just, there must be some more to this story that I’m missing. Is there?
Farron Cousins: Not that I’ve seen. Eventually we’ll probably see once the quarterly spending reports come out, we’ll see how much these corporations gave and to whom they gave it to. And that’ll tell us a lot.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. The only good news is it’s unconstitutional. The health, safety and welfare is gonna be a good argument on this case from the constitutional standpoint.
Americans are getting ripped off when paying for their prescription drugs. Not only do we have the highest prices in the world, but when you add in the fact that your tax dollars already paid for the drug, that you had a clear picture of how bad you’re being ripped off when you understand those kinds of numbers. Look, let’s begin at the beginning. NIH pays for most all of this drug research. Okay. The companies like Pfizer and Merck, they come in and they get that free information from NIH that taxpayers have paid for. They come up with a new drug. The list is startling. We’ll put it up for everybody to see. But when you look at the list of drugs and what taxpayers paid through the NIH and other, colleges, universities, it’s startling. Pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What we have here in the United States through the NIH and the money that they dole out is the National Institute of Health will typically say, okay, you’ve got a university group of professors that are working on a new diabetes drug. They’ve got all this research. They’ve done the papers. Let’s give them a big old grant so that they can start this and develop this drug. And then the researchers, the scientists, they do this. And then the pharmaceutical company comes in and says, hey, wow, you got a great thing here. Uh, we’re gonna buy this from you and your university. Your university’s gonna get a lot of money. We’re gonna hold the patent and we just have a couple fine tuning to do. We’ll spend $10 million on top of the hundred million you’ve spent, and we’re good to go. And they profit in the billions from it. But like you just said, we already paid for those drugs. My tax dollars, your tax dollars. We paid for that already.
Mike Papantonio: Let’s talk about the 10 drugs that are being reviewed, where the industry, the drug industry has gone apoplectic, 10 drugs. We’re only talking about 10 drugs. And in those 10 drugs, taxpayers spent of just those 10 drugs, taxpayers spent almost $12 billion, $12 billion, taxpayers paid to develop those drugs. And big pharma made 70 to $80 billion off of those drugs that taxpayers paid for. And then they, in there, they jacked up prices sometimes as high as 2000% on those same drugs that taxpayers paid for at NIH. Drug Company comes in, acquires the drug, costs taxpayers $12 billion, industry makes $70 billion. Nobody’s doing anything about it. Nobody. It’s just like, okay, no problem. And if you follow this story, Stelara, for example, the drug Stelara. Stelara, a dose of Stelara in the United States is.
Farron Cousins: Well, $16,000 in the US. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: $16,000 a dose of Stelara. In the UK it’s $2,500. What? Talk about it.
Farron Cousins: It’s absurd. And you’ve pointed this out because you actually asked this in a deposition one time, you were over in Europe taking the deposition of a drug executive. And you asked him, well, just real quick, why are you charging only this small amount over here, and yet you charge 10 times as much in the US? And the response was, well, because we can.
Mike Papantonio: We can, it literally was, we do that because we can. And it seemed to be okay. Everybody said, oh, all right. Well, that’s just how we do business in the United States. But I think it’s important that people understand that. That they understand that this is what’s happening in the United States. We’ll put a list of these drugs, Stelara, Stelara medicine that cost taxpayers six point, almost seven, well, $6.5 billion. Enbrel, $2.6 billion for taxpayers. Entresto, $901 million cost. And that’s not even, there’s still no no give from the industry to say, well, we’ll give you good prices. No, they won’t give us good prices, you know.
Farron Cousins: And the reason we’re paying so much more is not just because they can, it’s because they have to recoup what they’re spending in advertising. Because they are spending billions and billions every year. I mean, if you watch primetime network TV.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, it’s disgusting.
Farron Cousins: And it’s the people happy, dancing. We’re taking this miracle pill and it’s all these horrible side effects coming across too. But look at how happy we are.
Mike Papantonio: We are so happy.
Farron Cousins: And they’re distracting you while they read the side effects.
Mike Papantonio: This drug, yes, it killed 150 people from heart failure. But we’re so happy about it. This drug, well, it shut down people’s liver. These are actually cases we’ve handled. Shut down people’s liver, a thousand people. But we’re so happy about it. These same people are advertising on television, acting like everything’s okay because we let ’em do it. New Zealand is the only other place in the world that allows that kind of advertising, by the way.
Parents in Connecticut are absolutely irate about an elementary school teacher that was spared a jail sentence even after the former teacher was accused of sexually assaulting students. I looked at this story and I tried to find that there was some reason for all of this break that this guy got. Did you see it?
Farron Cousins: You know, that is the first thing that popped into my mind too, is what actually happened here? Why is he being given this break? So, just so people understand, we’ve got this small town in Connecticut. This individual was an elementary school teacher, started in 1998, 54 years old, been teaching for decades. And the children, the little girls year after year would come in with these complaints, listen, he was touching us inappropriately. He was shoving his crotch in our faces. He was a big hugger, they said, taking lewd photographs of us in adult poses. And the administration did nothing. The fellow teachers that were told about this did nothing. They got indicted. But this guy gets off with zero days in prison.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So when I look at this story, the thing I do love in Connecticut, what is the Alford exception?
Farron Cousins: Alford plea. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: The Alford plea. The Alford plea is it’s no plea of guilt. Is no plea of anything. It’s just we’re gonna let you go, basically. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: We’re gonna let you go because we looked at the facts. The facts were pretty overwhelming. He was doing things like touching their breasts. He was doing things like having them sit on his lap, inviting them over to his house. This guy’s a child predator. I mean, there’s no difference.
Farron Cousins: Well, and he had the photographs of these young girls on his computer.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: So, there’s no question. There is no question at all that this is what happened.
Mike Papantonio: So, what do you make of it? Why does a prosecutor say, or a judge, now the judge acted like, I didn’t have any, the judge could have stopped this plea. The judge tried to tell the dad who was really angry about it, no, I can’t do anything about it. This is awful. She could have, she had total discretion to stop the plea. Just so if this story ever gets out, you know this judge had the absolute discretion to say, this is ridiculous. Her argument that, gee, this is shameful, is a ridiculous argument.
Farron Cousins: Well, it’s reminiscent of the Hunter Biden plea deal. The judge in that case said, absolutely not. You’re not gonna.
Mike Papantonio: I’m not gonna allow.
Farron Cousins: So judges can do that in a heartbeat and it’s over. But to me, there’s more to this story. Unfortunately, we don’t have it.
Mike Papantonio: Farron, don’t you like at least the part that the people that were supposed to be, the administration, they were pulled into it too.
Farron Cousins: Yes.
Mike Papantonio:: And they should have been. They should have been prosecuted as well, because apparently they let it go on for years, didn’t do anything about it for years.
Farron Cousins: Right. And they had their warnings. They understood what was going on. It was almost overt with what this man was doing. And so I want, I’m putting out a call to action right here, some good investigative journalist.
Mike Papantonio: I’d like to know this story here.
Farron Cousins: Track this down. Find out who his connections are, if there’s any family tree, if there’s any business going on. There is a reason he was let go with no prison time and there’s gotta be some kind of connection there.
Mike Papantonio: Right now I’m not seeing the connection because there’s not enough in the story. But some journalists needs to take a look at this. When you go as far as saying, well, we’re gonna bring in the administration too, because they overlooked all of this. There’s favors going on when it’s that serious.
President Biden’s taking on the issue of corporate price gouging and consumers desperately need some relief. But the question is whether he’s serious about tackling the issue or is it just a campaign stunt? I don’t know, man. I look at this story and I’m happy about it. I’m happy that Biden said, you know, he’s been talking about inflation, inflation, inflation. He’s been beat to death on inflation. They’re gonna probably, if they win the election, the Republicans win the election, inflation’s gonna be a big part of it. But you know what? He’s been told year after year in his administration, you have something available to you. You have executive orders. You have ways to do price controlling. And now on this very late date, it’s almost too late to me. People aren’t gonna get how important this story is, but pick it up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. He’s got this new task force that he has announced, and the task force, their job is gonna be investigate this price gouging that we already know is happening with these corporations, the grocery store chains, the manufacturers, electronics, all of it. And we know it’s happening, by the way, because they’ve openly admitted it. We sat right here standing in the same spot doing the story of the executives that are on tape saying, well, in times of rapid inflation, we inflate our prices anyway, so that we.
Mike Papantonio: We’ve done that story several times.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. And so they’ve openly admitted it. There is no question about it. But what we’ve got now with this task force, it may be too little too late. And that is why there is a part of me that feels like, I think this is being done for political reasons.
Mike Papantonio: Well, I don’t really care about that. Whether it’s political or not, it’s the right thing to do.
Farron Cousins: It is.
Mike Papantonio:: I’m proud of Biden for doing it. It’s just like everything else right now. He’s playing catch up. And you don’t have time. I mean, I don’t think you have time. I think the last State of the Union speech moved the numbers favorable to him by four points or something like that. But you can’t, it’s gotta be a long game. You don’t have that much time left. And I’m glad to see that he comes up with this and says, yes, we can control prices. We can threaten corporations. We can tell ’em that if you don’t do this, we’re gonna go after your money that’s offshore. If you don’t do this, we’re gonna change your tax code in a way that you’re not gonna like. If you don’t do this, we’re going to investigate and we’re gonna regulate more. There’s all kinds of threats that he had that he’s had the entire time. And while the Democrats have been beat to death, I mean, they have been.
Farron Cousins: Oh, absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: It’s like number, it’s like way, way high in the list of what people, inflation. And he could have controlled the inflation where it came, when fuel went out of control. He had just, it’s an executive order. There’s ways you can do that. But he hasn’t done it. And he’s, and I don’t, it’s hard for me to always blame him when he’s surrounded with advisors that are supposed to be telling him this. He’s, like it or not, he is not getting up every day thinking about how do I improve this problem or that problem. His advisors should be doing that. Right?
Farron Cousins: Right. And look, Elizabeth Warren has been on top of this particular issue for several years now.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Good example.
Farron Cousins: And so it’s not like they didn’t know about it. It’s not like it was something that they just stumbled upon a couple weeks ago. They have known for a very long time. And Elizabeth Warren basically handed them the roadmap and said.
Mike Papantonio: She did.
Farron Cousins: She said, here are the bad guys.
Mike Papantonio: And they ignored her. They ignored her.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Not only did she hand here’s the bad guys, Farron, she says, this is specifically how you deal with it.
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: She told him that. She told the administration that three years ago. So now where are they left? They’re left with this late date of doing something that’s very important, that might be one of the best things he’s done as president. And all of a sudden it almost becomes meaningless because you don’t have time to sell it. You don’t have time to even talk about it. People are gonna see this segment, maybe they’re gonna, oh, well that’s good. Or maybe they’re gonna, you’re not gonna see it written about. Corporate media’s not gonna write about this. You know, it’s not blood. It doesn’t sell.
Farron Cousins: Well, what he’s gotta do is not just form the task force and say, I’m done. He has to get out there at the podium and not just talk about the issue. He’s gotta name names.
Mike Papantonio: Yes.
Farron Cousins: And he has got to point fingers. He has gotta say, this guy at this company, this woman at this company. They’re overcharging you x amount of dollars.
Mike Papantonio: Pictures, photos and names. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yep.
Mike Papantonio: I agree with you. It’s what we do on this show. Thanks for joining me, Farron. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all this week. But all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. So make sure you’re subscribed. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you stories every week corporate media won’t tell you because they’re advertisers, they don’t allow it. They just said, no, we’re gonna pull advertising if you tell this bad story about one of our products that we’re selling, or they’re either, they’re so connected to a political party, they’re too Democrat or Republican, and they can’t tell the story, they can’t color outside the line of the talking points for that political party. We don’t have that problem here. If you followed us, you’d understand that. Hope to see you next time.
Suspicious Activity: That it had helped dirty money flow through its branches around the world, including at least 800. Plaintiffs allege that the defendants provided money and medical goods to terrorist groups, Hezbollah and Jaysh al-Adl. This is a well organized business for these individuals that carry out these attacks. Terrorism is a business and they run it like a business. They knew about what was going on for a decade. They absolutely, absolutely no question about it knew that HSBC was washing money. They had every reason to understand it was for terrorism and it was for drug cartels. Took no action whatsoever.
These banks are involved, their accounts are connected, and they’re using them to mask the transactions. The more complicated they can make the transactions, the more distance they could put between the bad guys and a seemingly legitimate purpose of these funds. They pay $1.9 billion, which is a drop in the bucket compared to what they’ve made. And nobody goes to prison. These CEOs, these bankers that made this decision, they’re safe at home. They know what they’ve done. They know it’s resulted in the death of Americans, contractors and soldiers, not just hundreds but thousands. And we look the other way because they don’t look like criminals. The die cast, the people that are responsible for it, are on Wall Street. And they don’t look like criminals. It’s almost a suspension of disbelief. Sometimes I’ll have people call me and say, is this, is this real? Do they really get away with this? Yeah, they do.
