Category: Campaign Finance

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Cathy’s Coffers Part I, CMR For Congress

A Roadmap for understanding campaign finance

This diagram is from a 2014 interactive article in the NYTimes. It is a great place to start understanding the effect of money in our politics. The limits on contributions are indexed to inflation, so the illustrated limits are now higher, e.g. $5400 can be given directly to a Candidate’s election committee ($2700 for the Primary and $2700 for the General election), and a conventional political action committee (PAC) can receive $5000 from an individual donor. 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress campaign fund receipts for January 1,2017 to March 31, 2018

Dear Group,

When the Spokesman periodically reports campaign contributions to McMorris Rodgers and Lisa Brown the numbers come from the Federal Election Commission (fec.gov). Donations and expenditures are supposed to be transparent. I suppose they actually are, but transparency is only useful if you look…and trying to understand the data at fec.gov is a time consuming and bewildering task. 

The balance sheet for CMR for Congress displayed above says volumes. Who does McMorris Rodgers serve? If you click “Itemized individual contributions” you’ll find that 1368 unique individual contributions make up that 877K. For reference, Lisa Brown, in six months less time (just since July 1, 2017) has 1864 individual contributions totaling about the same amount of money, 834K. Clearly, Lisa has many more contributors but on average they contribute smaller sums.

Then look at “Other committee contributions” for McMorris Rodgers. That $1,081,720 consists of 517 contributions from Political Action Committees. Click on the number on the page Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress and you can browse them. They are almost all corporate PACs. Names like BNSF, Comcast, AT&T, ConocoPhillips, and Halliburton are among those that pop out. Take note that Lisa Brown has announced she will decline money from corporate PACs.

Then look at “TRANSFERS FROM OTHER AUTHORIZED COMMITTEES.” There, properly filtered, you find 333 unique individual contributions, only 38 of which come from the whole of Washington State. 286 of the 333 are for more than $500. Hmmm. The highest number you see in the list is $2700. That’s the legal maximum for a single election.  It’s hard to buy a lot of influence with $2700 in a field where there is so much money. We’ll address that issue tomorrow when we look at the PAC through which these 333 contributions are funneled.

The Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress campaign summary sheet above shows, with a bit of dissection, something around a million dollars in corporate PAC contributions and another nearly a half million in contributions that are mostly from folks outside of Washington State. That is more than half of the total balance sheet of $2.7 million. It will buy quite a lot. Remember, though, these are just the funds under McMorris Rodgers’ direct control. This is the money she can deploy directly as the incumbent to pursue re-election. It is only a fraction of the money that will slosh around eastern Washington in the next six months on her behalf.

How, if you have the extra money, do you manage to buy more influence? More tomorrow.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry
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Cathy’s Coffers Part II, The “Dream” Project

A Roadmap for understanding campaign finance

This diagram is from a 2014 interactive article in the NYTimes. It is a great place to start understanding the effect of money in our politics. The limits on contributions are indexed to inflation, so the illustrated limits are now higher, e.g. $5400 can be given directly to a Candidate’s election committee ($2700 for the Primary and $2700 for the General election), and a conventional political action committee (PAC) can receive $5000 from an individual donor. 

McMorris Rodgers American Dream Project  campaign fund receipts for January 1,2017 to March 31, 2018

Dear Group,

Orientation: Yesterday in Part I, we looked at McMorris Rodgers individual campaign coffer, Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress. The take home message is 1) a lot of her money comes from corporate PACs, 2) she has fewer donors than Lisa Brown who give larger amounts of money, 3) on account of well-meaning campaign finance laws limiting the size of the donations, what you see in Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress does not necessary represent the full financial clout wielded by the donors. Seeing that requires more sleuthing.

Look at above diagram. In today’s post we are still just looking at those three categories in the upper left part of the diagram, Candidate, Party, and PAC political committees. We haven’t even had a whiff of the money unleashed by Citizens United. What we are looking at so far is only the money sloshing in the traditional, pre-Citizens United efforts to get around campaign finance law.

While combing through Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress, I ran onto MCMORRIS RODGERS AMERICAN DREAM PROJECT; THE (C00543199). This is a traditional Political Action Committee. It is sub-classified as “NonQualified – Joint Fundraising Committee.” It is non-qualified because being “qualified” requires that the PAC contribute to at least five federal candidates. The American Dream Project contributes to only three: Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress, the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee), and yet another McMorris Rodgers PAC, “CMR POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (C00469429)“

Do you get a sense of the complexity…and the intertwining…of all these PACs wielded by McMorris Rodgers?

I encourage you to visit the American Dream Project website. In light of what is going on in the federal government today the rhetoric on this website made my skin crawl. Here’s an example: “It is the Cathy McMorris Rodgers joint fundraising committee to help recruit and fund candidates who believe in the American Dream and want to make America a land of opportunity, again.” So the “American Dream,” is, I guess, code for repealing the Affordable Care Act, passing a tax bill that rewards corporations and the rich, exploiting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), and dismantling the social safety net using the excuse that, now that we’ve rewarded the rich, well, now we’re broke.

The MR American Dream Project PAC accepts large donations and makes them legal by breaking them up and passing them through to the three recipients listed in the third paragraph above. I guess if you are a major business owner in the 5th Congressional Distrcit, you happen to have $300,000 you wish to contribute to this “Dream,” and you don’t mind having your name on the FEC website, this is really convenient. You and your wife just write a couple of checks for 150K and let the American Dream Project parcel the money out and keep it all legal. Under FAQs on the American Dream Project website you can see how it’s done, although their posted contribution limits are outdated.

The updated limits would send $5400 ($2700 X2) to CMR’s individual coffer, CMR for Congress. The next $5000 goes to the CMR PAC, then $33,800 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. For a $150,000 personal donation I haven’t yet worked out where the Dream sends the excess $105,800 dollars and keeps it legal, but I’m sure there’s a way.

I encourage you to visit the list of donors to the Dream, Click the “Amount” column heading on the right to sort the 265 unique contributions by size. There will be names you’ll recognize. Click the names to learn the contributor’s employment details, presumably an indicator of the business that made the contributor wealthy enough to contribute this money. Ask yourself what they hope to get in return. 

PAY ATTENTION: We’re still only talking about that part of the campaign finance picture represented by the circles in the crescent in the diagram above. We haven’t even glimpsed superPAC and Dark Money.

Here’s a really sobering fact: in the midterm election cycle (2 years) only 0.33 percent (1 of 300) U.S.adults makes a contribution of $200 or greater to ANY political candidate, party, or Political Action Committee. (I believe this is federal only, not state or local.) These >$200 donors provide 2/3 of all campaign funding (1/3 comes in smaller amounts). Ask yourself what a $300,000 donation must buy. Finally, recognize that these unimaginably wealthy mega-donors are just the ones willing to be publicly identified on the FEC website. We haven’t glanced at SuperPACs or at the dark money.wielded in the non-profit sector. 

More in Part III. 

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry
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Cathy’s Coffers Part III, The CMR PAC

A Roadmap for understanding campaign finance

This diagram is from a 2014 interactive article in the NYTimes. It is a great place to start understanding the effect of money in our politics. The limits on contributions are indexed to inflation, so the illustrated limits are now higher, e.g. $5400 can be given directly to a Candidate’s election committee ($2700 for the Primary and $2700 for the General election), and a conventional political action committee (PAC) can receive $5000 from an individual donor. 

The CMR PAC receipts for January 1,2017 to March 31, 2018

Dear Group,

Orientation: We are still looking only at the political money in those three circles in the upper left of the diagram above. This is the money you can trace if you spend the time. This is the money BEFORE the Citizens United decision (i.e. SuperPACs) and it is money that is not “Dark” (i.e. money spent for political ends by non-profits with undisclosed donors–the little circle down and right).

McMorris Rodgers, like all candidates, has her “for Congress” coffer, aka “Committee.”. By law money can only enter this coffer in relatively small chunks, $2700 per Election from an individual ($5400 per two year election cycle with a Primary and General Election) and $10,000 per cycle from a PAC. If stop looking after you’ve examined CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS FOR CONGRESS (C00390476), though, you’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Among these three circles in the upper left part of the diagram is MCMORRIS RODGERS AMERICAN DREAM PROJECT; THE (C00543199). Here you get at hint of the big donors that keep an incumbent like McMorris Rodgers in office. Of course, this is merely a conduit used to squeeze money through the legal knotholes into the CMR for Congress coffer and the CMR PAC. Any excess of donations given to the “Dream” passes through to the National Republican Congressional Committee. 

Finally, there is the CMR POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE (C00469429), today’s topic. So far this cycle less money has sloshed through this one than the other two entities (600K vs. 2.7M vs. 2.1M), but it is still interesting. I urge you to click the link and explore.

Contributions: Under “itemized individual contributions” of 100K we have only 36 contributors, only 16 from Washington State. (See the P.S. below for a closer look.) 

“Other committee contributions” of $369K is another laundry list of PACs, nearly all corporate PACs, 109 of them, nearly half in legal maximum per election packages of $5000 . Check it out here. 

The $148K under “Transfers from Affiliated Committees” all comes from 38 individuals (12 from WA), psss-throughs from the McMorris Rodgers American Dream Project. These must represent the ones who contributed to the “Dream” in excess of the $5400 that the “Dream” first sends to Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Congress. Is your head spinning yet?

Expenditures: Where does the money go? $398K went as 163 contributions mostly to Republican candidates “For Congress” campaign committees. A few of those, unbelievably, went to yet other PACs, thus continuing the endless sloshing of the washtub of political money.

Another $113K was spent under “Other federal operating expenditures.” The recipients: fundraising consulting firms (>$50K), legal fees (>$30K), food, hotels, and “compliance consulting.”

Closing points: 1) With a bit of digging it is clear that large amounts of money from very wealthy corporate donors have attached themselves to McMorris Rodgers, many but not all from outside of Washington State. There are a few local notables.

2) Even within the small segment of campaign finance we’ve been examining (that is, NOT Super-PACs and NOT non-profits), even within this segment money is not easy to trace. The mega-wealthy can make contributions in so many ways that after the funds are washed (laundered?) and mixed through the traditional (non-Super) PAC system the money comes out gray. Indeed, much of our politics is fueled by “gray” money. 

3) Remember that all the small contributions (<$200) make up only 1/3 of political contributions. Two thirds of political money is contributed in >$200 chunks. Those larger contributions are made by only 1 in 300 American adults in the midterm election cycle. (Only .04% of adults…1 in 2500…gives $2700 or more.) So who do we expect McMorris Rodgers to listen to?

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Through their “Employees” (I think it is safe to say that in these cases “Employees”= substantial owners of), Inland Empire Paper Co. of Spokane and Nelson Irrigation Corp. of Walla Walla are major contributors to the CMR PAC (10K and 20K respectively, a total of 30% of the individual contributions to CMR PAC). You can explore other major monetary sprinklings of these contributors here and here. They total $60,400 and $40,800, respectively, just in this election cycle (1/1/17-present).

P.P.S. Among the interesting contributors is one “Petrizzo, Thomas J.” listed for the purposes of the CMR PAC as a resident of Seattle, WA, occupation “Government Relations”, and “employed” by The Petrizzo Group, the D.C. lobbying firm Megan Perez joined recently after leaving McMorris Rodgers. You can explore his other 64 political donations here along with several different listed addresses. One of The Petrizzo Group’s clients, of course, is Omeros, the drug company for which McMorris Rodgers slipped in a nice perk via the Appropriations Bill.

P.P.P.S. A cynical point: Is it an accident that all three of the McMorris Rodgers-linked campaign funds have different name labels: “Cathy McMorris Rodgers,” “McMorris Rodgers.” and “CMR?” Or was this intentionally done to discourage figuring it all out? There is no answer to this question, but there is reason to wonder.
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FEC Rules And Volunteers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIH_kBQdmdQ&feature=youtu.be

Dear Group,

Have you ever felt uneasy about working with a political candidate or political party for fear you might be breaking some arcane campaign finance rule? I have. Digging around the Federal Elections Commission website FEC.gov wasn’t a lot of help at first, but then I found a link there to  https://www.youtube.com/user/FECTube. It is a trove in nicely explained information. I haven’t digested more than a fraction of it so far. The video above answered a lot of questions I had.

First, remember these are the FEDERAL (Federal Elections Commission, FEC) rules, not the Washington State rules. The state rules are somewhat different and we’re not dealing with them today.

I got to thinking about this because I know a lot of people who are donating time and effort to political campaigns. It is clear to me that the monetary advantages of a Republican incumbent can only be overcome with “boots on the ground” AND money. I’m delighted to see the ranks swelling every day, folks knocking on doors, talking to neighbors, planting signs…and friends with Republican leanings acknowledging it is time for a change….

I urge you to watch the video above, but the short take is this:

  • The volunteering of all personal services, as long as one receives no compensation in return, is NOT considered a campaign contribution. So writing a blog, canvassing, training others, or hosting an event in one’s home related to a federal candidate or a political party…all that is NOT a campaign contribution. Phew!
  • The use of space in a home, library, church or community center is also NOT a campaign contribution as long as it is a space that a member or citizen can ordinarily use without paying a fee. If there usually IS a fee then that should be reported as a contribution. A discount offered to whatever is the regular fee is also an “in-kind” contribution and should be reported.
  • “Independent Expenditures,” like a billboard not coordinated with a Party or a Campaign have special reporting rules I’d have to study more.

There is always a lot more to learn.

If you want to get out in the nice weather tomorrow as one of those volunteers, there is a canvass in the Perry District from 10A-1PM. Check it out and sign up here.

Back on Monday.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

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Member’s Representational Allowance

2017 HON. CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS OFFICIAL EXPENSES OF MEMBERS. The first column is the Year-to-date, the second column is Quarterly, from the STATEMENT OF DISBURSEMENTS OF THE HOUSE, October 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017, page 1369. You can click on it and scroll around it here.

Dear Group,

Ever wonder how McMorris Rodgers…or, similarly, any member of the U.S. House…can afford to keep an office and manage staff in Spokane, Walla Walla, Colville, and Washington, D.C.? Like other U.S. Representatives, McMorris Rodgers’ personal salary is $174,000. $174,000 might provide a home and support for a husband and three children in Washington, D.C., but that wouldn’t begin to cover district offices, staff, and travel. It turns out there is a whole other pool of money, the MRA, that covers those expenses. Furthermore, both the personal salary and the MRA are supposed to be separate and distinct from all that campaign money McMorris Rodgers raises from entities like the National Rifle Association, Omeros Pharmaceuticals, and benefit auctions of AR-15’s (snideness alert). So what’s this “MRA”? How much is it?

As explained in a richly referenced article, the money is allotted from federal coffers, yours and my tax money, money specified in the Members’ Representational Allowance (MRA). The MRA is a prescribed sum currently budgeted between 1.2 and 1.4 million per House member (in round figures). The actual amount offered a House member depends on the Congressional District’s distance from Washington, D.C. and the local cost of office space rental. The MRA is to defray expenses of the House member’s “representational duties,” those being; the personal expenses component; the office expenses component; and the mailing expenses component.

In 2017 McMorris Rodgers’ spent $1,273,844.71 of her MRA. Her actual expenditures are close to the average allowed. (I don’t know the Congressional District 5 maximum allowed amount she had available, only what she actually spent, and that amount is close to the average MRA.) As you can see from the table above, the biggest share of the money, $1,013,209, was paid as staff salaries. So who are these people and what do they get paid? Look at the two tables below, (copied from the same federal document) for the last quarter of 2017. To figure the annual salary multiply by four (the presented numbers are last quarter of 2017 only).

Each House Member is allowed to employ up to eighteen full time staffers. I count sixteen staffers with annualized salaries over $30,000, including four with annual salaries between $95,000 and $120,000. (For reference, $30,000 is $15/hour annualized. $11/hour is the minimum wage in WA, $7.25 in ID.) There are five “shared employees.” I recognize four or five names as employees primarily located in Eastern Washington, and several that are mostly in Washington D.C. I believe office space in D.C. is not paid for out of the Members Representational Allowance.

A few observations:

  • $1.3 million annually is quite a large amount of money. Much of it (1/2?) is likely devoted to “constituent services,” i.e. helping Eastern WA people and businesses deal with issues they have with Social Security, the Veterans Administration, and other government programs and services. This is help McMorris Rodgers gets credit for, but it is help every Representative is expected to provide. It’s part of the job
  • Most of the staff in Eastern WA seems devoted to interfacing with constituents, not discussing legislation. In fact, my experience has been the local staffers are usually less informed regarding legislation than I am.
  • Whoever holds this office uses the money to help advance like-minded individuals by offering internships and work opportunities. During McMorris Rodgers seven two year terms she has fostered the careers of several. Toppling an incumbent House member changes the political landscape of the District more broadly than one might appreciate.

None of this $1.3 is supposed to be spent on political campaigns, including campaigns to acquire leadership positions in the Congress itself. The Members Representational Allowance (MRA) is meant for just what it says, the Member’s duties as a Representative of the District. By law a Representative is not supposed to benefit personally from the Members Representational Allowance, although a Representative may use personal funds to supplement Representational expenses if the expenses exceed the allowance.

Functioning as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives includes managing this $1.3 million “representational” budget for the benefit of the Member’s constituents. Lisa Brown, with five years as Chancellor of EWU Spokane, twenty years in the State House in Olympia, experience as Majority Leader of WA State Senate, and a graduate degree in economics is eminently qualified to step into that role.

Keep to the high ground,
Jerry

P.S. The basic information presented here comes from a series of fascinating articles from Thoughtco.com, in particular an article available here. I highly recommend further reading if you have time.

These numbers are for the last quarter of 2017, so for annual salaries multiply by four. This is publicly available information, the same pdf referenced above, pages 1369 and 1370. Use COMMAND (CMD) + to magnify the table if it is hard to read.

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A Nice Business Perk With Your Omnibus Spending Bill, Sir?

Dear Group,

The chart above is a screen shot taken of the stock price of Omeros, a small bio-pharmaceutical company based in Washington State. Last week overnight between Wednesday and Thursday its stock price jumped from 11.56 to 16.78 dollars per share, an increase of 45 percent. Wouldn’t you have liked to already own that stock on Wednesday (and maybe sold some of it on Thursday)?

I guess this is the way the real money is made in the stock market. Institutional investors trading overnight had gotten wind of something about Omeros. When the markets opened to the little guy on Thursday morning the price had already popped. What happened?

This is where Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Paul Ryan come in. If you’re pressed for time go to FoxBusiness for the source article, but if you want the expanded version read on. (Versions of this article  also appeared Sunday in the Spokesman and the Sandpoint Daily Bee.) First, some background:

The story of Omeros’ overnight stock bump is the story of Omidria, the company’s main cash cow drug. Omidria is a combination drug (see details in the P.S. below) used only in eye surgery, specifically cataract surgery. The surgeon injects the drug into the front of the eye to dilate the pupil and reduce inflammation and discomfort. Omidria comes in a single use vial. The company priced the drug at nearly $500 per vial. For two years, as is the custom (since Medicare is forbidden to negotiate drug prices with drug companies) Omeros was paid by Medicare as a “pass-through,” i.e. Medicare paid the cost of the drug to Omeros. Without a “pass-through” exception like this one for Omidria, Medicare ordinarily says to the surgery center: “Here, you have this amount of money to do this surgery, everything included, you pick what you use.” That’s what Medicare usually does. So for two years cataract surgeons got to try out Omidria without thinking about the cost of the drug, i.e. the cost didn’t come out of their pockets, their patients pockets or the pocket of the surgery center in which they operated. Instead it came out of our pockets, from dwindling tax revenues. (For perspective Medicare’s “allowed” global fee amount to a hospital for a cataract surgery is $1,921.09.  For an ASC, it is $978.21. That’s before geographic adjustments. It does NOT include the surgeon’s “allowed” fee. Now consider the “passed through” price of Omidria is $500. That’s half again the outpatient surgery center’s global allowable. Drugs pricing is absurd.)

The idea is supposed to be the surgeon will learn in which patient’s eyes the drug is and isn’t useful, consider the cost of the drug, and balance the two in deciding what to use. The drug company bets that enough surgeons will believe the drug offers an advantage also hopes they will incorporate the drug into every cataract surgery while the price of the drug is not an issue. Omera tries hard to insure that use of Omidria becomes the “standard of care.” Then when Medicare drops the “pass-through” payment there will be a lot of whining about not being able to afford to use this wonder drug.

We’re all supposed to forget that the company Omeros got to name the almost $500 price tag at the beginning of all this, and we’re supposed to forget that Omeros is a publicly traded company with a stock price and a lot of money spent on marketing and lobbying. (So far they haven’t offered a penny of dividends.)

After two years we are also supposed to forget older, much cheaper drugs work just fine for the vast majority of cataract surgeries for dilating the pupil and suppressing inflammation.

Take note there is no free market for this drug. The original price is established by the company. Medicare is forbidden to negotiate the price. No patient gets to shop around even if they were knowledgable enough to do so effectively, and until the “pass-through” goes away, neither the surgeon nor the surgery center sees the cost or feels the pinch of the cost. Essentially, the system allows drug companies like Omeros to offer a “free” trial period in which to hook their surgeon customers, all on the taxpayers dime.

Omeros’ “pass-through” payment expired the end of 2017. Its stock price slumped from $20 to near $10 over a couple months where we find it in the above graph last Wednesday evening. What’s a CEO to do? Apparently, he or she goes to their “pro-business” Congresspeople to get a “rider” on a “must pass” bill like the Appropriations bill Trump signed last Friday. If a Congressperson is clever it is pretty easy to tuck away a provision to help out a campaign contributor in one page of text in a 2,232 page bill. Surely no one will notice. Hell, nobody will even bother to read all those pages, will they?

Actually, they will read it. FoxBusiness published an article entitled “Benefits of lobbying evident for small drugmaker” on March 24 from the Associated Press. Particularly considering the conservative source, it is well worth your time to read. McMorris Rodgers portrait is found at the top of the article.

According to the article McMorris Rodgers and Paul Ryan slipped this into the “must pass” bill at the last minute. You can read the pertinent section of the law here. It’s on page 1949 and it’s entitled “TITLE XIII—REVISIONS TO PASS THROUGH PERIOD AND PAYMENT RULES.” To be fair, both Parties have a history of slipping little zingers into “must pass” bills, zingers that couldn’t possibly get enough of attention of Congressional leadership to bring up, discuss, and actually have a separate vote.

  • Omeros spent just over $1 million on lobbying in 2017, up from $645,000 a year earlier as the company brought aboard two new firms to make its case to Congress and the Trump administration, according to lobbying disclosure records filed with the House and Senate.
  • The political money website Open Secrets shows that Omeros CEO Demopulos donated $39,600 in the 2018 election cycle to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans. [some of which money will no doubt flow back to our district to defend CMR and smear Lisa Brown]
  • Federal Election Commission records show that Demopulos also donated $5,400 directly to Speaker Ryan’s campaign on Aug. 31, 2017. [That’s the maximum legal direct-to-the-candidate donation.] Demopulos gave $5,000 to Ryan’s political action committee, Prosperity Action Inc., on the same day.

McMorris Rodgers defense from the FoxBusiness article:

  • Nate Hodson, a spokesman for McMorris Rodgers, said she pushed the measure ‘to provide patients across the country access to safe, innovative, life-changing drugs.’ 

Perhaps her heart IS is the right place on this, but even if it is, this rider of hers and Ryan’s doesn’t smell right considering the circumstances. There is NOTHING about the lauded “free market” in this rider. It IS “pro-business,” though, a specific few businesses graced with $26 million of our tax money over ten years.

From another source, The Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. (Rated “Center Right” by mediabiasfactcheck.com) [Bold is mine.]:

  • This provision is the correct policy, was approved by both Republicans and Democrats involved in writing the bill, and was included at the request of members of our conference,” said Ryan spokesman AshLee Strong. “To suggest any other reason is not only false but absurd and insulting.

Sorry, Mr. Paul Ryan, it may be insulting, and properly so, but it is NOT absurd.

This in a time when the public is fed up with drug prices… You choose for Ryan and McMorris Rodgers. Are they hapless victims of their own good intentions or are they trying to pull a fast one to satisfy a campaign contributor? I don’t see another option and I like neither of the alternatives.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry

P.S. Omidria is a combination of two drugs, phenylephrine 1% and ketorolac 0.3% . Phenylephrine has been around many, many decades, ketorolac more than a decade. To be sure, injecting these drugs into the eye is a new use. Getting that approved by the FDA no doubt required expensive testing to prove safety and efficacy, but these are NOT new drugs.