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Obama administration gives $433m no-bid contract to Democratic donor.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  November 12th, 2011 at 11:17 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The last time I checked, didn’t the Left call this sort of thing ‘crony capitalism?’

Over the last year, the Obama administration has aggressively pushed a $433-million plan to buy an experimental smallpox drug, despite uncertainty over whether it is needed or will work.

Senior officials have taken unusual steps to secure the contract for New York-based Siga Technologies Inc., whose controlling shareholder is billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, one of the world’s richest men and a longtime Democratic Party donor.

As you probably know, smallpox was eradicated in the wild decades ago: mostly because it was a genuinely terrifying threat to humanity, and humanity didn’t get to the top of the food chain by being anything less than ruthlessly efficient when it comes to threats. So the virus now exists only in a few research locations, and we do in fact maintain sufficient stocks of existing vaccines to control an outbreak (whether via accident and/or terrorist activity).

Perelman’s drug (ST-426), on the other hand? Not tested on humans, costs 85x what the existing vaccine does, is only intended for people who missed a four day window after exposure – and was fast-tracked through the approval process by administration officials anyway, to the point of reassigning health care experts who kept pointing out all of this. And, oh yes, said officials denied the existence of correspondence between them and the company (Siga) that makes ST-426.

Read the whole article: there’s a lot in there, from the way that the administration deliberately eliminated competitors to Siga from the bid process (claiming urgent need) to the minor detail that Siga brought SEIU leader and key Obama ally Andy Stern literally on board in 2010. It’s also pretty handy as an example of how to break the intent of the law without actually quite having it proved that you broke the letter of it: the great flaw of bureaucracy is that there is always a loophole or an exception that can be manipulated. The only defense to that is public disapproval: and since the administration’s partisans can’t be bothered to watchdog their political faction, it’s up to us to do that…

Moe Lane

UPDATE: Pejman Yousefzadeh has thoughts on this.

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  • NeoKong

    How much of that money will end up paying for Obama’s reelection….?
    Who will notice?

    After a guy makes a couple of trillion dollars evaporate who would care about a paltry couple of hundred million ?

  • Tbone

    is The Republican Congressional leadership’s failure to respond to it.

    They are just as morally and ethically bankrupt as Obama.

  • daveoconnor

    This and it’s link are informative and rightly disturbing. GOP primary candidates are you paying attention? The present administration is akin to a set of bowling pins ready for a strike.

  • lightspeed

    This, as well as a number of similar cases, is a criminal theft of OUR MONEY. We all know that much of this money stolen from the American people will return to Obama in the form of campaign donations and other more personal benefits. I am sick of the Democrats and Republicans siphoning off cash from the taxpayers for their own personal benefit. THIS MUST STOP! We need to expose the Jackass-In-Chief* and put these crooks in jail. This administration is engaged in the most brazen “welath transfer” to themselves and their friends in the history of the nation. It will only get worse if he is re-elected. And they will laugh all the way to the bank.

    *I think this is the proper title for the head of the Democratic Party, no?

  • snowshooze

    Of course. Absolutely, otherwise, what would be the point?
    I wonder what the kickback percentage to Obama is going to be on his one.
    These giveaways need to be immediately stopped.

  • jseville

    It’s funny to see this dramatic piece and outrage over how corrupt this nearly half a billion dollar contract is. Just a couple months ago RedState was referencing those asking hard questions about vaccines “wackos”.

    In case writers hadn’t figured it out yet…vaccine policy in heavily corrupted by crony socialism/capitalism with industry executives sitting on committees with the CDC and FDA and getting their agenda $$$ as law. Duh.

    Same thing with food policy and the FDA and EPA. You have a judge recenty ruling that farmers could not drink their own raw milk…then he leaves his position to work as an executive at Monsanto. Classic.

    Bottom line, vaccine policy is a hugely $$$ conflicted arena that is so corrupt to render it as having no credibility. 1 small example of this is why 5 year old kids need their SECOND Hep B shot again after having received at 12 hours old. The high risk groups for Hep B are prostitutes and drug users. It’s supposed benefits are temporary though–5 year ish.

    You better believe some Big Pharma co. is making a LOT of money of millions of extra Hep B shots though. And you better know that they had heavy influence on the vaccine schedule that exploded in the 80s-today.

    Seeing how corrupt this process is should cause all parents to want to go research each vaccine one by one and sift through the bullcrap instead of som bizarre religious faith in government vaccine policy with its massive crony capitalist influences.

    I guess the commons sense thereof makes me a wacko.

  • center77

    but it is unwise to turn down something that saves lives because those who make it have found ways to make bucks off of it. We must remember, Vaccines save billions of lives over that last hundred years, and there is no doubt parents should do research into them, but politicians should not scare people away from them for political purpose.

  • joecollins

    This president must be defeated.

  • Neil1030

    Oprah and the rest of the elites told us things would be different under 0bama. He would bring us “to a higher plane!” Ha ha. I have always been a cynic but it was easy to see how wrong they would be. Too many people with brains of mush allow themselves to be duped.

    On a related topic, did you see Sec. Shinseki’s speech at the Veterans Day memorial yesterday? Sounded more like a campaign speech for the president, IMO. I watched a few minutes of 0bama’s speech and found it dull, and the delivery uninspired, as usual. I didn’t even watch it all.

  • ericblair00

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2346641/?tool=pmcentrez&rendertype=abstract

    http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/bt/smallpox/news/may0808poxdrug.html

  • ericblair00

    Fast-tracking development of a bio-defense vaccine is appalling! And did you hear the owner of the pharmaceutical company gave money to democrats?! Why in a country with two political parties, the fact that a pharmaceutical company owner gave money to the democrats and then got a contract to produce medicine is clear evidence of criminality! yeaaa!!

  • ericblair00

    Before you demonstrate how stupid you are, why don’t you type in the name of the vaccine into google and read what it does and why it is being developed?

  • renl57

    “we do in fact maintain sufficient stocks of existing vaccines to control an outbreak (whether via accident and/or terrorist activity)”

    Not true.

    The smallpox vaccine is the old-style “dryvax” live virus vaccine. But today we have a lot of folks who are not able to take a live virus vaccine like that one:

    Patients taking steroids
    Patients taking immunosuppressants (like me, I have a kidney transplant)
    Patients battling cancer
    Patients who are HIV positive

    This vaccine was developed a very long time before organ transplantation became commonplace; before HIV and AIDS became widespread; and before patients started taking oral steroids to treat all kinds of inflammatory conditions.

    This new drug, ST-426, is intended as an antiviral treatment after you’ve already caught smallpox (like the way they give Tamiflu to patients who caught the flu).

    It’s not a bad idea.

    But the crony capitalism aspects of the ST-426 development are a bad idea.

    Fortunately for me, I had the smallpox vaccine when I was 11 years old, back when it was still routinely prescribed in America, long before I got my kidney transplant.

  • snowshooze

    Gee. How very eloquent of you.
    Alrighty then… explain why we need to go to this expense.
    Realize too that we could vaccinate everyone in the country for less with the current vaccine.
    I don’t know where you are coming from, possibly you are just a bit sensitive about the Obama Kickback Re-election Program.
    Possibly you are a conspiracy theorist.
    Really, maybe you are so many levels of intelligence above me that we cannot communicate.
    But you are still rude. I get that part.

  • Bill S

    They tend to be that way.

  • ericblair00

    I was rude and I apologize. Some people on this site are so blind to anything they don’t hear from Hannity or Rush that it upsets me. I shouldn’t have been rude to you and I apologize.

  • ericblair00

    but that was a cute comment. Conservatives are generally very well mannered right? Like Coulter, Hannity and Rush?

  • snowshooze

    No bones.

  • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

    .no.text.

  • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

    If the government solution is always the best solution, why would standard government processes and controls need to be bypassed in this situation? Are you suggesting that typical government bureaucracy can actually get in the way of accomplishments critical to our nation’s success?

  • ericblair00

    I never said that government solutions were always the best and I would never argue that bureaucracies are always right.

    I don’t even know if this drug is necessary or cost/effective. All of this should be examined.

    What I do know is that blindly attacking a bio-defense drug because an executive suprorts democrats is no more credible than a leftist blindly attacking Halliburton.

  • greyeagle

    I understand your point about vaccines and instance of Smallpox vaccine. The illustration of Hepatitis B vaccine probably should not have been used. The two groups utilized are not the only groups. Hepatitis B can be transmitted by body fluids especially blood, human bites, cuts etc Healthcare workers, Fire/EMS/Police are also at risk. If a baby is born to a Hepatitis B positive mother, they will likely wind up a chronic Hepatitis B carrier unless they receive the vaccine. They would likely develop liver cancer at a young age. It always takes at least 2 doses, and likely at least one more dose after age 18. This disease is very easy to contract, because of the large amount of Hepatitis B virus present in blood or body fluid. The vaccine is made from yeast.The current smallpox vaccine is what was used years ago. It has a LOT of side effects. Smallpox disease can also be transmitted from the vaccine to others who come in contact with fluid from the large blister. There has been a search for a safer vaccine. That may not be what is at stake here. I did read that there is a plan to test on children. That would NOT be something I would allow on my children.

  • d_lamar

    Under our Constitution, the president cannot spend a dime unless authorized by the House of Representatives. So when are the conservatives going to start demanding an explanation from Boehner why he authorized this kind of spending?

  • Scope

    of how gov. budgeting goes for the various departments? I didn’t think so.

  • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

    Your mask already slipped. We know who you are.

  • d_lamar

    Perhaps he didn’t specifically authorize that exact expenditure, but her certainly gave Obama the broad spending authority that allows Obama to do what he wants to do with billions of dollars.

    So I guess you’re ok with that? Thought so.

  • snowshooze

    And if they think that smallpox might be weaponized, we merely inoculate against it with the current form of vaccine. Forget the four day window…
    And why rush it anyway? Because there is money to be laundered.
    And it may not be available for long. So the time to grab is now.
    Absolutely transparent.

  • Adjoran

    or “the Stimulus bill” which has many billions which have never been spent. That was passed before Republicans took the House.

    So you have no clue what you are talking about at all.

  • Adjoran

    for a vaccine for a disease which exists only in a couple of labs in the world.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    Impressive, in its way. Fairly pointless, but then you could say that about so much of the Internet.

  • billstanley

    Obama enjoys being the Czar of the USA. If he wins in 2012, he will have four years as a lame duck … that is scary. www.newsandopinions.net

  • mikem13

    This administration cares nothing about the Constitution. What makes you think obama would bother to even consult the House. Much less take no for an answer?