{"id":180596,"date":"2017-03-06T00:17:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T05:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/06\/even-if-he-werent-an-anti-vaxxer-patrick-kennedy-would-have-just-jumped-the-shark\/"},"modified":"2017-03-06T00:17:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T05:17:00","slug":"even-if-he-werent-an-anti-vaxxer-patrick-kennedy-would-have-just-jumped-the-shark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/03\/06\/even-if-he-werent-an-anti-vaxxer-patrick-kennedy-would-have-just-jumped-the-shark\/","title":{"rendered":"Even If He Weren’t an Anti-Vaxxer, Patrick Kennedy Would Have Just Jumped the Shark"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t realize it, but Patrick Kennedy and Newt Gingrich have a lobbying firm together and they have been hired by a pharmaceutical firm to push their product<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A company that sells a new opioid-addiction medication is a secret funder of an advocacy group fronted by Newt Gingrich and Patrick Kennedy that is pushing for more government funding and insurance coverage of such treatments. <\/p>\n

Gingrich<\/a>, the former Republican House speaker and a Trump confidant, and Kennedy<\/a>, a former congressman and son of former US Senator Edward Kennedy, are paid advisors to Advocates for Opioid Recovery<\/a>. They have generated a flurry of media attention in those roles, including joint interviews with outlets ranging from Fox News<\/a> to the New Yorker<\/a>.<\/span>
<\/span>Gingrich told STAT this week<\/a> he didn\u2019t know who was funding Advocates for Opioid Recovery, and the nonprofit group\u2019s officials refused to disclose its financial backers. <\/p>\n

The answer, according to a filing<\/a> with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is Braeburn Pharmaceuticals Inc<\/a>. The private company, based in Princeton, N.J., won approval last year to market an implant that continuously dispenses the opioid addiction medicine buprenorphine.<\/p>\n

In a prospectus filed with the SEC in late January as part of a now-postponed effort to take the company public, Braeburn disclosed it entered into an agreement to make a $900,000 charitable donation to Advocates for Opioid Recovery. The filing indicates the company had paid $675,000 to the nonprofit group as of Sept. 30. It did not specify when the remaining funds would be paid. <\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Kennedy declined to be interviewed this week, as did Van Jones<\/a>, the CNN commentator and former Obama aide who is another paid adviser. Earlier this week, Woodbury and a spokesman for the nonprofit refused to say who was funding it, adding that the donors wanted to remain anonymous.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, they would want to remain anonymous.<\/p>\n

Patrick Kennedy needs to get an honest job. <\/p>\n

As to Van Jones, I just find it kind it kind of depressing:  Everyone in DC eventually sells out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn’t realize it, but Patrick Kennedy and Newt Gingrich have a lobbying firm together and they have been hired by a pharmaceutical firm to push their product: A company that sells a new opioid-addiction medication is a secret funder of an advocacy group fronted by Newt Gingrich and Patrick Kennedy that is pushing for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,387,567,374],"class_list":["post-180596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-hypocrisy","tag-pharma","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180596"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}