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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Story of a DINO Senator's Daughter, Fake MBA's, EpiPen's and Price Gouging Drugs
Let's Start With the Faux Master's of Business Administration degree from Heather Manchin-Bresch -- Senator DINO Joe Manchin's Daughter. This story is from 2008:
But the panel's blistering report, released two weeks ago, also offers a detailed, inside look at how far officials were willing to go for the governor's daughter, inventing explanations, falsifying her records and repeatedly misleading the public.
Investigators unanimously concluded the decision to award the degree last fall, nearly a decade after Ms. Bresch left the program, was rife with favoritism.
The findings triggered the resignations of Provost Gerald Lang and business school dean R. Stephen Sears from their administrative posts, and launched widespread calls for the ouster of President Michael Garrison, a long-time family friend and former business associate of Ms. Bresch, whose boss, Mylan Chairman Milan Puskar, is WVU's biggest benefactor. Mr. Lang and Mr. Sears have said they will remain at WVU to teach.
WVU's scramble to justify the acceptance of Ms. Bresch's claim that she earned the degree in December 1998 began Oct. 11, when the Post-Gazette made a routine call to the registrar to confirm a master's degree listed among the newly appointed chief operating officer's credentials. Initially, the paper was told she did not finish her degree.
Days later, ignoring official records showing she did not earn the degree, top officials began a series of changing explanations.
They told the newspaper the registrar was wrong, dismissing the apparent discrepancy as a clerical error. They said Ms. Bresch had earned her degree in 1998 but was not officially recorded as a graduate because she had not paid the $50 graduation fee.
"She completed all the course work necessary to graduate, but we discovered that wasn't put on the record because the fee wasn't paid," spokeswoman Amy Neil said at the time.
When pressed, Ms. Neil added that because of a mix-up, the business school had failed to "transfer" some of Ms. Bresch's grades to the admissions and records office. She declined to say how many credits were involved but added that other students in the M.B.A. program had reported similar problems.
As the five-member panel would find, university administrators knew at the time both statements were untrue.
At the same time, the Post-Gazette had learned Ms. Bresch's transcript was missing 22 credits, or nearly half the 48 required, indicating that if there had been a mix-up, it was a massive one.
While Ms. Neil insisted that the business school had located records to verify the degree, behind the scenes, officials could find no such records and were piecing together a plan.
In a hasty decision reflecting "failures of process and failures of leadership," administrators added courses to Ms. Bresch's transcript that she neither took nor paid for, awarding her grades "simply pulled from thin air," investigators found.
Meanwhile, Ms. Bresch insisted to the newspaper that she had finished her degree in 1998. She declined to release a transcript or other documentation, saying her word and the university's word "were better than a transcript." She has declined to speak with the Post-Gazette since that time.
Mylan, too, sought to quash the issue.
http://www.post-gazette.com/local/2008/05/04/The-story-of-a-cover-up/stories/200805040203
Not learning anything from faking a degree one never had, Heather and Senator DINO "Cover Up For The Fam" Joe Manchin, took it to a whole new level. It, being, BS.
Sidenote: Did ya know that EpiPen's are NOW MANDATED as the allergic drug on stock in every public school district and maybe public charters too, across the WHOLE USA? Guess who lobbied for the passage of this bill. Heather.
Guess who made sure it was pushed up the "Bill Becoming A Law" chain-of-command just the right way? Senator "DINO" Joe Manchin. Guess who hiked up the EpiPen's price 400% shortly thereafter and her salary from $1.3M to over $18.5M? Heather - the Senator's Daughter.
See a Connection Here? Let's go on:
Records from OpenSecrets show that Mylan has given $72,543 to Senate and House of Representative members' campaign committees so far this year, but Manchin's more than $57,000 haul in 2012 from the company is more than five times the amount the firm gave to any other single candidate.
On Wednesday, Wells Fargo, in a research note, said that disclosure documents show that Mylan has been "actively lobbying" in favor of a bill in the Senate that would mandate that all airlines, domestic and foreign, carry at least two packs of epinephrine auto-injectors. EpiPens are, by a large degree, the most commonly used devices of that nature in the United States.
Mylan has spent a reported $875,000 on lobbying so far this year, after having spent $1.55 million in 2015, according to OpenSecrets.org,
On Tuesday, CNBC noted how Bresch's company, in addition to hiking the price of EpiPen by double-digit percentage amounts ever since Mylan acquired the device in 2007, has also been sharply raising the prices of other products this year.
In a research note in June, Wells Fargo had highlighted the fact that Mylan raised prices by more than 20 percent on 24 products, and by more than 100 percent on seven products. They include prices for generic drugs for common conditions such as gallstones (up 542 percent), gastroesophageal reflux disease (up 444 percent) and irritable bowel syndrome (up 400 percent).
As a result of the company's financial performance, Bresch's compensation hit $19 million last year, up from $2.45 million in 2007. Over the same period, an EpiPen's average wholesale price was being hiked by 461 percent.
Last year, Mylan, whose main offices are in Pennsylvania, reincorporated in the Netherlands, in what Bresch said was a defensive move against a possible takeover, but which also lowered the company's tax liability. Bresch's senator father Manchin is on the record as being opposed to tax inversions.
Even after that tax inversion, Mylan argued to the FTC that it should be treated like an American company for the purpose of U.S. antitrust regulations, which would have made it tougher potentially for Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals to acquire Mylan.
Teva launched a hostile takeover bid in April 2015 for Mylan. Teva dropped that bid in July 2015, and months later Mylan failed in its own effort to buy generic drug manufacturer Perrigo for $26 billion.
"We know the inversion has invoked a lot of emotional and political banter but the reality is we remain a U.S. issuer under all of the formal and informal guidelines," Bresch told the Bloomberg news service at the time, in June 2015.
Bresch, who started as a data entry clerk at Mylan, was named chief operating officer in 2007. As STAT News noted Wednesday, at the time she was promoted to that position, Mylan pointed out that she had a Master of Business Administration from West Virginia University, which she claimed to have received in 1998.
In fact, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper investigation in 2007 said school records indicated that Bresch had obtained just 26 academic credits out of the 48 credits required for an MBA.
The paper found that WVU awarded Bresch her degree retroactively in 2007, after initially telling the newspaper that she never received her degree, and after Bresch insisted she had. Manchin was the state's governor at the time. The school, which had received more than $20 million in donations from Mylan's founder, claimed that Bresch had "completed all the requirements" for an MBA, except for paying a $50 graduation fee.
However, an investigation panel set up at WVU whose then-president was Bresch's high school classmate and former Mylan lobbyist Mike Garrison found that "Ms. Bresch did not earn an MBA at West Virginia University."
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/24/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-ceo-behind-the-big-epipen-price-hikes.html
This is some real deep, rotten, disgusting....SHIT! Straight up. Using individuals that need a Pharma product (EpiPen's) that LITERALLY can be the difference between LIFE and DEATH, to hike the price 400% after securing a major government contract with the chief arbitrator of securing the contract - being one's DINO Senator Daddy in the U.S. Senate.
Someone's are going DOWN for this, as this story has triple spider legs. Straight up.
DAMANgoldberg
(1,278 posts)I know from personal experience that you can complete the requirements for a Master's degree and not actually get it if you don't pay a Graduation Fee. In my case and school it's $150, which after other degrees from said school felt like shouldn't have to pay yet again, but they are stubborn about this. The education degree earned will not matter in the grand scheme of things locally because the local school system doesn't either think much of it, or doesn't care.
LovingA2andMI
(7,006 posts)To earn the degree by 22 credits...or half of the credits required for the M.B.A.
At the same time, the Post-Gazette had learned Ms. Bresch's transcript was missing 22 credits, or nearly half the 48 required, indicating that if there had been a mix-up, it was a massive one.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)Response to DAMANgoldberg (Reply #1)
trixie This message was self-deleted by its author.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)liberalla
(9,247 posts)'What do they have to lose?'
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)There's no other way to say this, he's been a mainstream dem, in the same way Claire McCaskill and Jeanne Shaheen have been.
One could say that his elevation to honorary co-chair was recognition of him as a model of democratic -centrism-.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/joe-manchin-heidi-heitkamp-third-way-group-116594
And we should never forget, a dem is always better than a republican. If that absolutism is absolutely true, then it's even true if he's pushing legislation that will enrich his daughter.
alarimer
(16,245 posts)And why we need more Democrats in a Feingold/Wellstone mode. Get rid of the centrists, third way, blue dogs types for good.
LovingA2andMI
(7,006 posts)Is it not clear? Democratic in Name Only.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)If we call him a DINO then every centrist Third Wayer should be called the same. And that includes people protected from criticism on this website.
The application of No-true-Scotsman is just a mechanism for distancing the cognitive dissonance this sort of democrat places on our self-perception.
The no-true-Scotsman fallacy is how we paint over the democrats who are in one or more way as bad or worse than republicans. We do that because we cherish the ridiculous (worthy of ridicule) notion that democrats are -always- better. That line replaces actually paying attention to what democratic politicians do and say, and relieves us of thinking about what to do with a less pleasant reality.
LovingA2andMI
(7,006 posts)Response to this..... and run another Democratic Candidate, PERIOD!
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)a la izquierda
(11,794 posts)He sucks, unless you like guns and unrestricted destruction of the environment.
Fuck Joe Manchin. People in this state are blaming Democrats for this sort of shitty behavior.
Oh, and our current candidate for governor? He changed his affiliation in May 2015 and refuses to endorse Senator Clinton. I'm guessing I'm supposed to vote for him, but there's no way in hell that I will vote for him OR Minchin. Ever.
spinbaby
(15,090 posts)The dirty little secret is that they were coerced into donating and probably had to attend some boring dinner and listen to a speech to do it.
LovingA2andMI
(7,006 posts)And Yep.
alarimer
(16,245 posts)Yet, we are told constantly that Dems are better that Reps. Yeah, maybe, mostly anyway. But Dems like these people are are still awful and bad for the country. We have to stop voting by party and start evaluating representatives on their merits or lack thereof. THIS kind of entrenched bullshit is what happens when people are told to "vote for the lesser evil." Well, that "lesser evil" just becomes more set in stone and their offspring get and abuse privileges you and I would never have. I hope Manchin himself goes down for this, that the good people of West Virginia send his privileged ass packing, even if it means electing a Republican. I hope his daughter goes to prison (she won't because it was likely completely legal.)
It is this sort of regular occurrence that makes people so angry at politicians (and by extension their families). This abuse of power, which happens all over the political spectrum, is why we are fed up and want something different. But, again and again, we are old to vote D because...reasons.
I actually EARNED my master's degree and my daddy didn't have to pulls strings in order to get it.
LovingA2andMI
(7,006 posts)As a fellow earned my M.B.A. recipient, your reply speaks volumes, and then some.
ProfessorGAC
(65,021 posts)I've got 3 of those, one is an MBA. I earned all of them and i did them while i had a full time job.
Getting a free ride to a higher degree is not the least bit admirable. It's cheating
Gormy Cuss
(30,884 posts)It was very clear that until I paid off the debt I could not call myself a graduate. Since the amount owed was caused by an administrative error I negotiated a deal to pay them back after I had started working and I was allowed to go through the ceremony but did not receive my degree until the debt was paid.
But then, my father wasn't a senator and my future bosses weren't contributors to the school.
LovingA2andMI
(7,006 posts)At least you earned the credits required first along with paid off the debt.
Meanwhile Heather got "help" from "Friends and Relatives in High Places", and could not even manage to earn the 48 credits required for her "M.B.A.".
MagickMuffin
(15,938 posts)Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a contractor in the Pharmaceutical Preparation Manufacturing industry. Last year, they won 25 contracts worth $353,983. Since 2000, the contractor has performed 59 contracts with a total obligation amount of $1.66 million, which means Mylan Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a large government contractor. The average obligation amount for their contracts is $28,085.
Isn't nice to also receive government funding? More of the welfare queens and kings sucking at the government nipples!
LovingA2andMI
(7,006 posts)To have a Daddy Senator (Literally) While One Is CEO, To Receive Such Large Government Funding.
Calculating
(2,955 posts)Our country has truly been corrupted from the inside out.
LovingA2andMI
(7,006 posts)n/t
Ruby the Liberal
(26,219 posts)Not only did they lobby to get schools to have to purchase, but you can't buy a single epipen any longer. You can only buy them in packs of 2. Why? Mylan lobbied for the FDA to change their recommendation from 'carry 1' to 'carry 2' because in a strong reaction, sometimes it requires 2 doses to reverse the histamine. So they repackaged them in 2s and doubled the price - even before the price increases started in earnest back in 2010.
Good times.
LovingA2andMI
(7,006 posts)And as for Heather and her greedy ways.....
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)I think "master bullshit artist". In 30 years of working, nothing has changed that for me