• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Katie Porter's Mighty Whiteboard

lpetrich

lpetrich

Contributor
Joined
Jul 27, 2000
Messages
25,148
Location
Eugene, OR
Gender
Male
Basic Beliefs
Atheist
Rep. Katie Porter and her whiteboard blast Mark Alles, pharma executive, on Celgene price hikes - The Washington Post
Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) got out her marker and scrawled a figure on the whiteboard beside her: $13 million.

“Do you know what this number is?” she asked Mark Alles, the former CEO of the pharmaceutical company Celgene, as he testified remotely before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday. “Does it ring any bells?”

Alles could hardly get his answer out before Porter scribbled more math on the board. That multimillion figure — his total compensation in 2017 — was already 200 times the average income in the United States, the congresswoman pointed out. It got even larger, she said, after Celgene needlessly tripled the cost of a cancer medication, thus securing himself hefty bonuses in return.

“Isn’t that right, Mr. Alles?” she asked him. “If you hadn’t increased the price, … you wouldn’t have gotten your bonus.”
Click to expand...
The drug's price rose from $215/pill in 2005 o $719/pill last year.

KP asked MA:
“Did the drug start to work faster? Were there fewer side effects? How did you change the formula or production of revlimid to justify this price increase?” Porter asked.

Of course, he didn’t need to answer. The details were laid out in a congressional drug pricing investigation published Wednesday, which concluded that prices were jacked up to hit revenue goals for shareholders and thus score bonuses for Alles and others.

“To recap: The drug didn’t get any better. The cancer patients didn’t get any better. You just got better at making money,” Porter told him. “You just refined your skills at price gouging.”
Click to expand...
Investigation shows Celgene, Teva plotted to keep drug prices high
After a two-minute clip of the interaction was posted online on Wednesday by the consumer rights group Public Citizen, at least half a dozen people chimed in to say Porter, whiteboard in tow, should moderate the next presidential debate.

Others aimed higher. “At this point, when Katie Porter runs for president in the next decade, she won’t need a vice president,” one person wrote. “Her vice president will be her dry-erase board.”

...
As The Washington Post’s Renae Merle reported last year, Porter had testified before Congress several times before her election in 2018 and quickly drew notice within months in Washington for her “analytical” approach during hearings. The day before a hearing, the lawmaker said she often spends time studying a 70- to 150-page binder of background information compiled by her staff to prepare for difficult testimonies.
Click to expand...
Doing what a Congressmember should.
 
Here's a nice article on Whiteboard Katie (my nickname). That's in parallel with "B-1 Bob" Dornan, a previous well-known politician from Orange County.

Los Angeles Times on Twitter: "Katie Porter (D-Irvine) has made a name for herself as a tough questioner of CEOs, but also, for her whiteboard she uses. She talks about its origin and why it’s an important tool for her. (vid link)" / Twitter

She has several of them, including a small one that can fit into her purse. She uses it to illustrate the arithmetic that she does to illustrate what she says. That goes back to her law-professor days, and doing arithmetic on it was sometimes very helpful.

Some Congressional committees like her whiteboards, others don't. Though Maxine Waters, head of the Financial Services Committee, isn't very friendly to KP's whiteboards, KP says that some people in Oversight and Natural Resources are looking forward to her whiteboard presentations. She also has made a whiteboard of dinner-table rules.

Why Katie Porter Isn’t on the House Financial Services Committee - The American Prospect
Porter’s hard-charging style clearly rankled Waters, the committee chair. When Porter began to use visual aids like whiteboards and posters to make her points in hearings, Waters sided with Republicans on multiple occasions and forced her to stop. Later, when Porter played an audio clip at a hearing about debt collectors, Waters publicly admonished her: “Will the gentlelady please refrain from disrupting this committee?”
Click to expand...
Rep. Katie Porter on Twitter: "That's right: I do carry a whiteboard in my purse. It helps with making questions plain for witnesses and the American people (and reminding misbehaving kids of dinner table rules).

If you’re going to try to dodge accountability, you’ll have to go through the whiteboard. 👩*💼" / Twitter
 
Maxine doesn’t have much gas left in the tank. Hopefully Katie Porter will get her day soon enough.

Whiteboards are great. I had an entire wall of whiteboard at my last job in the navy. It was like 22’ of whiteboard. Everything I needed was up there and the first thing I scanned every morning. No software could ever be as efficient. If I ever dated Katie Porter, I’d take her someplace like that and ply her with wine and dry erase markers. Intoxicating.
 
The white board is at it again.

[YOUTUBE]https://youtu.be/ofk74gpgnLA[/YOUTUBE]
 
Good for her in finding a compelling way to make the point. Well done.
 
Just saw another one of hers. I hadn’t seen these before. I am a very visual person as well. I’m a fan now.
 
Katie Porter is like Bob Woodward or Ronan Farrow. "I have some questions" can be an extremely devastating statement in the proper context. A real life superpower. Good for her.
 
She brings it all together. More of her, please!
 
If the insurrectionists are not successful, I’m thinking Katie in ‘28.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom