Joe Conason has an excellent piece in Salon, looking at Sen Joe Lieberman, his wife, Hadassah, and and her employment by Hill & Knowlton, the public relations and lobbying firm that has flacked for a gamut of gamy clients, from the tobacco lobby and the Kuwaiti government to Enron.
Among Hill & Knowlton's clients when Mrs. Lieberman signed on with the firm in March last year was GlaxoSmithKline, the huge British-based drug company that makes vaccines along with many other drugs.
Sen. Lieberman introduced a bill in April 2005 (the month after his wife joined Hill & Knowlton) that would award billions of dollars in new "incentives" to companies like GlaxoSmithKline to persuade them to make more new vaccines. Under the legislation, known as Bioshield II, the cost to consumers and governments would be astronomical, but for Lieberman and his Republican cosponsors, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., the results would be worth every penny.
Using the war on terror as their ideological backdrop, the pharma-friendly senators sought to win patent extensions on products that have nothing to do with preparations against terrorist attack or natural disaster.
Actually, Mrs. Lieberman abruptly quit the Hill & Knowlton job sometime earlier this year, perhaps sensitive to the problems her position might create for her husband in a contested Democratic primary, during a year when lobbying and corruption are potent issues.
The Liebermans' 2005 federal tax return, released by his campaign in July, showed that Hill & Knowlton had paid her almost $77,000. In the past she has worked for a lobbying company, APCO Associates, that had many pharmaceutical and healthcare corporations among its clients, as well as for major drug companies such as Pfizer.
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