Headline of the Day

Patel’s Proving A Heavy Bourbon for Trump 

—The Status Kuo, Ka$h Patel's many excesses during his tenure at the FBI.

Quoting the old Japanese proverb, "バカにつける薬はない." (There is no medicine for stupidity.)

As I wrote about last month, The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick published a blockbuster investigation of FBI Director Kash Patel based on over two dozen current and former FBI officials, detailing what the magazine described as his “conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences.” The report alleged that meetings were delayed because of late-night drinking, that senior Justice Department officials were alarmed by his conduct, and that Patel was often unreachable.

Patel’s allies said it was all fabricated. The FBI pushed back. And a reasonable person might have thought, “Okay, lay low. Let it blow over. Don’t make it worse.”

Kash Patel is not a reasonable person.

The account gets far weirder from there. 

You Know, Morons

Source of the headline

It appears that while sharing sensitive dsetails of a stroke on Yemen with his fellow government bureaucrats, Pete Hegseth was also sharing these same details on his personal phone to his wife, brother, and lawyer. 

I did not know that a pathetic drunk could multitask so effectively: 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer, according to four people with knowledge of the chat.

Some of those people said that the information Mr. Hegseth shared on the Signal chat included the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat the same day that mistakenly included the editor of The Atlantic.

(Emphasis mine)

Mr. Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer, a former Fox News producer, is not a Defense Department employee, but she has traveled with him overseas and drawn criticism for accompanying her husband to sensitive meetings with foreign leaders.

Mr. Hegseth’s brother Phil and Tim Parlatore, who continues to serve as his personal lawyer, both have jobs in the Pentagon, but it is not clear why either would need to know about upcoming military strikes aimed at the Houthis in Yemen.

I've got a guess as to why, it's because Secretary Pete is an addicted co-dependent idiot?

Then again, I'm an engineer, not a psychologist, Dammit!*

The previously unreported existence of a second Signal chat in which Mr. Hegseth shared highly sensitive military information is the latest in a series of developments that have put his management and judgment under scrutiny.

Gee, you think?

Their stupidity may yet save the Republic.

^*I love it when I get to go all Dr. McCoy!

As If There Weren’t Enough Reasons to Hate Them with a White Hot Passion

It turns out that Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) extorted money from pharmaceutical companies to in furtherance of the pharma companies peddling addictive drugs.

Seriously.  Just shut them down.  Make them illegal.

In 2017, the drug industry middleman Express Scripts announced that it was taking decisive steps to curb abuse of the prescription painkillers that had fueled America’s overdose crisis. The company said it was “putting the brakes on the opioid epidemic” by making it harder to get potentially dangerous amounts of the drugs.

The announcement, which came after pressure from federal health regulators, was followed by similar declarations from the other two companies that control access to prescription drugs for most Americans.

The self-congratulatory statements, however, didn’t address an important question: Why hadn’t the middlemen, known as pharmacy benefit managers, acted sooner to address a crisis that had been building for decades?

One reason, a New York Times investigation found: Drugmakers had been paying them not to.

For years, the benefit managers, or P.B.M.s, took payments from opioid manufacturers, including Purdue Pharma, in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans overdosed and died from prescription painkillers, the middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments.

Let's be clear here.  PBMs did not, "Take,"  payments from big pharma, they did not, "Accept," payments from big pharma, they DEMANDED payment. 

Demanding payment from drug manufacturers and pharmacies is their whole business model.

………

The documents reviewed by The Times — including contracts, invoices, emails, memos and financial data — span more than two decades, beginning with the debut of OxyContin in 1996. Many came from a public repository of records unearthed during court cases and investigations. The Times also obtained more than 200 previously confidential documents from plaintiffs in litigation against drugmakers, P.B.M.s and others.

In the public assignment of blame for the opioid epidemic, the P.B.M.s have largely escaped notice. Drugmakers, distributors, pharmacies and doctors have paid billions of dollars to resolve lawsuits and investigations. But more recently, the largest P.B.M.s have been in the legal cross hairs.

………

But this often presented the clients with a fraught choice: If they added restrictions, they could lose the rebates that helped make coverage affordable.

In addition, documents show that P.B.M.s sometimes collaborated with opioid manufacturers to persuade insurers not to restrict access to their drugs.

Fines are not enough.  Jail the mother-f%$#ers.

Seriously, Just Shut Them Down

Another day, another centimillion dollar settlement paid by McKinsey & Company for corruption, this one for rat-f%$#ery with Purdue Pharma in furtherance of addiction to opioids.

Enough already.

McKinsey & Company has agreed to pay $650 million to settle a Justice Department investigation of its work with the opioid maker Purdue Pharma. A former senior partner has also agreed to plead guilty to obstruction of justice for destroying internal company records in connection with that work.

At the center of the government’s case was the global consulting giant’s recommendation that Purdue Pharma “turbocharge” sales of Purdue’s flagship OxyContin painkiller in the midst of an opioid addiction epidemic that was killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The settlement and the government’s findings were presented at a news conference in Boston on Friday. According to prosecutors, McKinsey “knew the risks and dangers associated with OxyContin,” as well as the fact that top Purdue Pharma executives had pleaded guilty to federal crimes relating to sales of the drug. Yet the consulting company chose to continue working with the drugmaker to boost sales of the opioid.

………

McKinsey is widely regarded as the world’s most prestigious management consulting firm, with offices around the globe from which it advises most of the Fortune 500 companies as well as government agencies, including those in authoritarian nations such as China and Saudi Arabia.

That they are not a corporate pariah is an indictment of our society in general.

In recent years, McKinsey has settled government investigations in the United States and overseas by paying hundreds of millions of dollars while not admitting any wrongdoing. That is no longer true.

McKinsey issued a statement on Friday apologizing for its work with the opioid maker.

Oh my, they apologized.  How about throwing executives in jail?

………

In court papers released on Friday, federal prosecutors traced the arc of McKinsey’s work with the opioid maker.

In July 2009, McKinsey wrote that Purdue Pharma’s “top priority” should be “driving a more impactful OxyContin franchise.”

In subsequent years, as the opioid crisis grew, McKinsey continued to formulate new ways for the drugmaker to increase profits, including targeting “opioid naïve” patients, a term used to describe individuals not currently using the drug or those who had used it only once.

You know, before they are jailed, the people who did this should be publicly horsewhipped as well.

………

Congress held hearings in 2022 focusing on the firm’s simultaneous work with opioid makers and the Food and Drug Administration after reports in The Times and elsewhere. A congressional report found that since 2010 at least 22 of the firm’s consultants had worked for both Purdue and the F.D.A., sometimes at the same time.

And they still are hired as consultants by the US government.

No.  Just no. 

My bad, they prosecuted one guy:

………

The guilty plea by the former senior partner, Martin Elling, stems from internal communications in 2018, after Massachusetts sued Purdue over its opioid marketing. Two of the firm’s leading partners who oversaw the Purdue account, Mr. Elling and Arnab Ghatak, discussed how to handle it.

OK, they prosecuted two guys:

………

The plea follows an announcement this month by federal prosecutors that another former McKinsey senior partner, Vikas Sagar, pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in connection with paying bribes to secure South African government contracts for the firm. McKinsey had earlier fired Mr. Sagar.

How about a corporate death penalty for McKinsey.  They should be destroyed just as Arthur Andersen was.

Not Enough

The criminal organization/consultancy McKinsey & Company will pay at least $½ billion to settle charges that it was a criminal co-conspirator with big pharma drug pushers.

Of course, they are denying wrongdoing.  (Of course, they are lying about that)

McKinsey & Co. is nearing a deal with US prosecutors to pay at least $500 million to settle federal probes into its past work helping opioid makers boost sales, according to people familiar with the matter.

A settlement, which could be announced in the coming weeks, would resolve criminal and civil investigations by the Justice Department, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing a confidential matter. The terms haven’t been finalized and could still change.

………

The settlement would add to penalties that McKinsey has already paid US states for its past work with drug companies that produced highly-addictive painkillers. The privately held firm, which said it generated a record $16 billion in revenue last year, agreed in 2021 to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to settle claims by states that it helped fuel the country’s opioid epidemic by providing sales analysis and marketing advice.

Note that they were doing this while they were consulting with (among others) the FDA, a clear conflict of interest.

Considering the company's long record of aiding and abetting corruption, one has to wonder why they are accredited to consult with the government.

McKinsey is to business ethics what Ebola is to French kissing.

Gee, Ya Think?

The Department of Justice has announced that McKinsey & Company is under criminal investigation for its role in the marketing of opioids.

This is not a surprise.  The information from the Sackler/Purdue Pharma lawsuits makes it clear that they were aggressively conspiring to maximize sales by maximizing addiction and suppressing adverse reports.

McKinsey has left a trail of destruction wherever it has been called in, corruption, addiction, mass layoffs and closings, etc.

They are a particularly destructive breed of parasites:

The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation into consulting firm McKinsey related to its past role in advising some of the nation’s largest opioid manufacturers on how to boost sales.

Federal prosecutors are also probing whether McKinsey or any of its employees may have obstructed justice in relation to records of its consulting services for opioid producers, according to people familiar with the investigation, which has been ongoing for several years. 

A grand jury has been empaneled in Virginia as part of the federal investigation into McKinsey’s opioid-related consulting, some of the people said. The U.S. attorney’s offices in the Western District of Virginia and the District of Massachusetts are jointly conducting the investigation, the people said. 

………

The criminal probe centers on consulting advice McKinsey gave to drugmaker clients including Purdue, Endo International and Mallinckrodt that previously sparked mass civil litigation against the firm. Government and private plaintiffs filed hundreds of civil lawsuits in recent years accusing the consulting firm of exacerbating opioid addiction, an allegation that McKinsey has denied. 

In 2021, McKinsey reached a settlement with all 50 states, five U.S. territories, and Washington, D.C., to pay $642 million to resolve civil opioid-related litigation against the firm, without admitting wrongdoing. The firm in 2023 reached separate deals totaling $347 million with Native American tribes, public school districts, insurance companies and municipal governments, also without admitting wrongdoing.

Yeah, they paid out almost a billion dollars in the above cases, and there was no admission of wrongdoing.

I know that litigating these cases is expensive, but those costs are WAY less than a billion dollars.

So what did McKinsey do?

It did what it always does:

………

McKinsey’s former clients Purdue, Endo, and Mallinckrodt filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy while facing mass lawsuits alleging they sold drugs through misleading marketing practices and fueled addiction. McKinsey helped Purdue, the closely held maker of the painkiller OxyContin, develop an initiative to boost drug sales and marketing, according to records released after Purdue went bankrupt in 2019.

McKinsey consultants advised the company on how to increase sales of its flagship drug, including suggesting that Purdue’s sales team make more calls to healthcare providers it knew wrote high volumes of OxyContin prescriptions and spend less time on doctors who prescribed the opioid medication the least, the records showed.

………

McKinsey previously said it stopped doing work on opioid-specific businesses in 2019 and that its work for Purdue was intended to support the legal use of opioids and patients with legitimate medical needs. 

Yeah, "Legitimate needs," that's the ticket!

McKinsey also advised Purdue and Endo on how to target the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for sales of their products, according to documents made public through the firm’s settlements with state and local governments. This advisory work occurred while McKinsey was simultaneously working as a consultant for the VA itself. McKinsey has said that it advised the VA on matters unrelated to opioid procurement.

We need to march McKinsey senior executives out of their offices in handcuffs.

So they Were All Coked to the Gills?

I was aware that there was a Presidential physician, as well as some sort of a clinic in the White House, but I was unaware of the existence of a White House pharmacy, and that they were handing out Ambien and Provigil to staffers like it was candy.

The fact that they were all abusing puppy uppers (Provigil) and doggie downers (Ambien) to create an illusion of normalcy says a lot:

The White House has its own pharmacy that, until recently, could perhaps best be described as a hot mess, according to a recent investigation report from the Department of Defense’s Office of the Inspector General.

For years, the White House Medical Unit, run by the White House Military Office, provided the full scope of pharmaceutical services to senior officials and staff—it stored, inventoried, prescribed, dispensed, and disposed of prescription medications, including opioids and sleep medications. However, it was not staffed by a licensed pharmacist or pharmacy support staff, nor was it credentialed by any outside agency.

The operations of this pseudo-pharmacy went as well as one might expect, according to the DoD OIG's alarming investigation report. The investigation was prompted by complaints in May 2018 alleging that an unnamed "senior military medical officer" was engaged in "improper medical practices." This resulted in the OIG's investigation, which included 70 interviews of Military Office officials who worked in the White House between 2009 and 2018 and covers the office's activity until early 2020. However, the investigation heavily focused on prescription drug records and care between 2017 and 2019 during the Trump administration.

During that time, staff at the White House pharmacy kept handwritten records of prescriptions, the OIG found. The records frequently contained errors in medication counts, illegible text, and crossed-out text and lacked medical provider and mandatory patient information. The pharmacy let White House staff pick up over-the-counter drugs from open bins, in violation of Navy medical regulations. It didn't dispose of controlled substances properly, increasing the risk of diversion. Staff provided prescriptions without verifying patients' identities and provided prescriptions to people who were ineligible for care. And it dispensed pricey brand-name products freely, rather than generic equivalents that are considerably cheaper—also a violation of regulations.

In one interview, a White House pharmacy staff member said an unnamed doctor asked "if I could hook up this person with some Provigil as a parting gift for leaving the White House."

Provigil is a drug that treats excessive tiredness and is typically used for patients with narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and other sleep disorders. Brand-name Provigil is 55 times more expensive than the generic equivalent. Between 2017 and 2019, the White House pharmacy spent an estimated $98,000 for Provigil. In that same timeframe, it also spent an estimated $46,500 for Ambien, a prescription sedative, which is 174 times more expensive than the generic equivalent. Even further, the White House Medical Unit spent an additional $100,000 above generic drug cost by having Walter Reed National Military Medical Center fill brand-name prescriptions.

(emphasis mine)

If I were working for Donald Trump, I'd probably need to abuse drugs too.

Good News Everyone!

I did not expect this, but has just stayed Purdue Pharm's bankruptcy.  More specifically, it will rule on the bankruptcy discharging liability for the Sackler family as a part of this deal.

Good.

I did not expect this, but it seems to me that if corporations are people, then the bankruptcy of a corporation should not discharge any obligations of any other person. 

It is only in federal bankruptcy courts in certain districts, such as the one where Purdue relocated to just prior to their bankruptcy extend bankruptcy to right owners and it seems to me that SCOTUS would have not placed a stay on the bankruptcy unless there was significant sentiment on the court for reversing the decision of the lower court: (On edit: See Cory Doctorow here detailing how they "Moved" to White Plains, New York to get one of the 3 corrupt bankruptcy judges favored by big companies declaring bankruptcy*)

The Supreme Court blocked Purdue Pharma’s $6 billion settlement of opioid lawsuits against its Sackler family owners, agreeing to hear the Justice Department’s claim that the drugmaker’s bankruptcy plan improperly wipes out potential liability to additional parties for allegedly fueling the opioid addiction crisis.

The justices, by taking up the case and preventing Purdue from carrying out the settlement during the appeal, ensured that a sizable chunk of tens of billions of dollars pledged by the pharmaceutical industry to combat the opioid crisis will be delayed—or not paid at all. But the move eventually could open the door for parties who balked at the deal to win additional compensation.

The court’s review also will extend the long, costly litigation alleging that drug manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies oversupplied painkillers as opioid addiction grew into an epidemic.

The legal uncertainty also will continue for the Sacklers, who sought to use Purdue’s chapter 11 proceedings to resolve opioid lawsuits aimed at holding them responsible for the costs of addiction and clawing back distributions they received from the closely held manufacturer before its bankruptcy.

The idea that owners should not be liable for a company's debts is at the core of modern finance and bankruptcy law, and I generally support this, particularly for mere shareholders, though I think that it is carried to far in recent years

The difference here is the Sacklers were not just owners.  Members of the Sackler family ran the company, and this firm to aggressively pursue addiction and misuse of Oxycontin because it increased their profits.

They are criminals, and even those who just won the birth lottery and did not participate in the management of the company knew where their money came from.

I'm not optimistic about a Billy Ray Valentine scenario,^† but at the very least, the Sackler family, have to be sh%$ting their pants right now.

^*Here is the important quote:

Three judges – David Jones and Marvin Isgur of Houston and Bob Drain of New York – hear 96% of the country's large corporate bankruptcies:

https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2021/05/judge-shopping-in-bankruptcy.html

These judges are unbelievably horny for corporations, embracing a legal theory "that casts the invention of the limited liability corporation alongside that of the steam engine as a paradigmatic development in the pursuit of prosperity":

https://prospect.org/justice/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-the-sacklers-purdue-pharma-bankruptcy/

Now there are more than three bankruptcy judges in America, so how do the nation's biggest companies get their cases heard by these three enthusiastic Renfields for corporate vampirism?

They cheat.

For example: when GM was facing bankruptcy, it argued that it was a New York company on the basis that it owned a single Chevy dealership in Harlem, and got in front of Judge Drain.

The Sacklers were – characteristically – even more brazen. They really wanted to get their case in front of Judge Drain, the nation's most enthusiastic supporter of "third party releases," through which bankrupt billionaires can wipe the slate clean, securing dismissals of all claims by the people they wronged.

Drain is also uniquely hostile to independent examiners, "an independent third-party appointed by the court to investigate 'fraud, dishonesty, incompetence, misconduct, mismanagement, or irregularity…by current or former management of the debtor."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3851339

If you're the Sacklers, hoping to keep two thirds of your billions and extinguish all claims by your victims, there is no better helpmeet than Judge Robert Drain of the Southern District of New York. So, 192 days before filing for bankruptcy, the Sacklers opened an office in White Plains, New York (a company may claim jurisdiction in a specific court once they've operated a business there for 180 days).

Then they filed a bankruptcy in which they altered the metadata on their casefile, inserting the code for a Westchester county hearing into the machine-readable, human-invisible parts of the documents they uploaded to the federal Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system (they also captioned the case with "RDD, for "Robert D Drain").

They chose their judge, and the judge obliged. UCLA Law's Lynn LoPucki is one of the leading scholars of these bankruptcy "megacases," and has written extensively on why these three judges are so deferential to corporate criminals seeking to flense themselves of culpability. She sees judges like Drain motivated by "personal aggrandizement and celebrity and ability to indirectly channel to the local bankruptcy bar. The judge is the star and the ringmaster of a megacase – very appealing to certain personalities."

Thus, these judges are "willing and eager to cater to debtors to attract business…[an] assurance to debtors that…these judges will not transfer out cases with improper venue or rule against the debtor…"

https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/02870w66d

^†It comes from the movie Trading Places, "You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people."

I'm Gonna Live Forever!

I need my coffee

A study published in Annals of Internal Medicine suggest that coffee drinkers have a lower death rate than their compatriots who eschew the beverage.

Needless to say, I am stoked about this:

People who drink coffee – whether with or without sugar – appear to have a lower risk of an early death, although experts caution the finding may not be down to the brew itself.

………

Previous studies have suggested the beverage may be beneficial to health, with coffee drinking associated with a lower risk of conditions ranging from chronic liver disease to certain cancers and even dementia.

Now researchers in China have found people who consumed a moderate amount of coffee every day, whether sweetened with sugar or not, had a lower risk of death over a seven-year period than those who did not.

Similar results were found for instant, ground and decaffeinated coffee.

The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, is based on data from more than 171,000 participants of the UK BioBank – which has collected genetic, lifestyle and health information from more than 500,000 people since it began in 2006, including details of participants’ coffee-drinking habits.

The team used data from death certificates to track the participants for a median period of seven years from 2009, during which 3,177 people died.

After taking into account factors including age, sex, ethnicity, educational level, smoking status, amount of physical activity, body mass index and diet, the team found that, compared with those who did not drink the brew, people who consumed unsweetened coffee had the lowest risk of death.

This is glorious news.

Why Does Anyone Hire These Criminals?

EY is Ernst & Young

In testimony before Congress, representatives of McKinsey & Company declare that even theough they worked for Perdue Pharma to maximize addiction, they were completely ethical when they were consulting with the FDA at the same time.

Yeah, sure.

That's why they have already paid $600,000,000.00 to settle claims of wrongdoing.

Meanwhile McKinsey has also:

• Facilitated bribery in South Africa.
• Conflicts of interests with its in house hedge funds.
• Enron.
• Advising insurance companies to make low-ball offers.
• Price gouging by the pharmaceutical company Valeant.
• Data falsification at Rikers Island jail.
• Consulting for ICE and telling them to make their detention facilities worse.
• Fingering Saudi dissidents to Saudi despot Mohammed bin Bonesaw.

McKinsey's job is to justify the unethical.  It's their specialty, and they launder (Ivy League Wash?) their image by hiring graduates from the most prestigious schools.

They need to be Arthur Andersoned:

McKinsey & Co managing partner Bob Sternfels told a congressional committee Wednesday that his consulting firm did not have a conflict of interest when it gave advice both to Oxycontin manufacturer Purdue Pharma LP and the government agency charged with regulating opioid sales.

McKinsey gave consulting advice to both Purdue and the Food and Drug Administration from 2008 to 2019, and 22 of its consultants worked for both clients, according to a report published by the House Oversight Committee, which hosted the hearing. During that period, McKinsey offered to "turbocharge" Purdue's opioid sales while also working with the FDA division overseeing the development and marketing of drugs.

That work did not create a conflict because McKinsey advised the FDA on topics such as technology upgrades and organizational efficiency, Sternfels said.

………

Democratic Representative Katie Porter of California pointed out the omission allowed McKinsey to avoid a government review of potential conflicts of interest.

"Your scheme worked really well," Porter said. "McKinsey got contracts, Purdue got rich, and America got addicted."

Why this organization is tolerated in polite society is beyond me,

A Corrupt Decision, through a Corrupt Process, with a Hand-Picked Judge

Judge Robert Drain, beloved by big money bankruptcy filers for his rocket docket and his unwillingness to look for fraud has ruled to dissolve Purdue Pharma and indemnify the Sackler Crime Family™ from civil suits.

It stinks, and the whole process is corrupt from top to bottom:

1. Sacklers create an opioid pain killer and sell it with false claims.
2. The knowingly and aggressively market it to create as much addiction and death as possible because it is profitable.
3. When caught, they set up a phony headquarters in White Plains, New York (Purdue is based in Connecticut) so that they can use a judge who has been very accommodating to the wealthy for decades.
4. The judge lets them off the hook.
5. They get off with a pittance paid out over more than a decade and remain fabulously wealthy.
6. Rinse, lather, repeat.
   

The injustice and corruption here is so clear that is shocks the conscience:

Purdue Pharma, the maker of the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin, was dissolved on Wednesday in a wide-ranging bankruptcy settlement that will require the company’s owners, members of the Sackler family, to turn over billions of dollars of their fortune to address the deadly opioid epidemic.

But the agreement includes a much-disputed condition: It largely absolves the Sacklers of Purdue’s opioid-related liability. And as such, they will remain among the richest families in the country.

Judge Robert Drain of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains, N.Y., approved the settlement, saying he wanted modest adjustments. The painstakingly negotiated plan will end thousands of lawsuits brought by state and local governments, tribes, hospitals and individuals to address a public health crisis that led to the deaths of more than 500,000 people nationwide.

The settlement terms have been harshly criticized for shielding the Sacklers. They are receiving protections that are typically given to companies that emerge from bankruptcy, but not necessarily to owners who, like the Sacklers, do not themselves file for bankruptcy.

………

While the settlement serves as a benchmark in the nationwide opioid litigation aimed at covering governments’ costs and compensating families, it also means that a full accounting of Purdue’s role in the epidemic will never unfold in open court. Purdue pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges for drastically downplaying OxyContin’s addictive properties and, years later, for soliciting high-volume prescribers.

………

Companies that emerge from bankruptcy restructuring are granted considerable legal protections. But federal appeals courts disagree over whether that shield can be accorded to owners, like the Sacklers. The prospect of Sacklers left relatively unscathed has led some members of Congress to introduce a bill that would prevent protections for owners in similar situations.

Your mouth to God's ears. 

It is clear that the corporate bankruptcy code encourages both reckless and criminal behavior, particularly the degree to which some judges choose to indemnify unconscionable behavior.

………

Nine states objected to the plan, arguing that the shields would prevent them from exercising their police powers to prosecute the Sacklers for violating civil laws like consumer protection statutes.

Washington State’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, called the plan “morally and legally bankrupt,” because, he said, “it allows the Sacklers to walk away as billionaires with a lifetime legal shield.”

Another objector was the U.S. Trustee, a program under the Department of Justice that monitors bankruptcy cases. Immediately after Judge Drain’s ruling, its lawyer said he would be requesting a stay of the order, pending an appeal.

………

Judge Drain had largely excluded the voices of victims during the two years. But at the conclusion of testimony in August, he pointedly acknowledged the families whose tragedies were entwined with Purdue’s drug.

Yes, he excludes the victims, and then makes pious pronouncements when he bails out the rich criminals.  Pardon me for doubting his sincerity.

The venal corruption of this decision mirrors his ruling in the Sears Bankruptcy, when he blithely signed off on Eddie Lampert's looting of that company.

Without meaningful reform, at some point, someone is going to go end going postal on folks like this, and if I'm the jury, there is no way that I would vote to convict.

Take it to Trial

The Sackler family is threatening to pull out the opioid settlement if they don't get immunity.

This should surprise no one.  The Sacklers are as guilty as hell, and they should be prosecuted.

Before they are prosecuted though,  we should start with asset forfeiture.

It would be WAY harder for the Sacklers to fight prosecutions, and civil suits if their wealth were seized, and  their wealth is CLEARLY the results of a criminal enterprise.  (FWIW, I actually oppose asset seizure for people not convicted of a crime)

To quote Billie Ray Valentine, "You know, it occurs to me that the best way to hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people."

Also, using asset forfeiture against them would be a greater deterrent to future wrong-doers than a few years in club fed:

A scion of the Sackler family, the billionaire owners of Purdue Pharma, vowed in court on Tuesday that the family would walk away from a $4.5 billion pledge to help communities nationwide that have been devastated by the opioid epidemic, unless a judge grants it immunity from all current and future civil claims associated with the company.

Absent that broad release from liability, said David Sackler, 41, a former board member and grandson of one of the founders, the family would no longer support the deal that the parties have painstakingly negotiated over two years to settle thousands of opioids lawsuits brought by states, cities, tribes and other plaintiffs.

………

Instead, he said he believed the Sacklers would resume fighting all the cases “to their final outcomes” — a process that would be inordinately costly and protracted for everyone involved.

………

A federal bankruptcy judge had been expected to confirm the plan at the end of these hearings, particularly after a majority of states that had earlier opposed the deal expressed support for it last month. But objections to the legal shield for the Sacklers have become the sharp focus of much of the testimony. The details of the Sacklers’ liability releases are so far-reaching that last week Judge Robert Drain himself said he had “some concerns about the breadth.”

………

He said the family anticipated that the liability shield would cover him, other members of his extensive family, and about 1,000 other individuals, including contractors and consultants, and protect them from lawsuits that had nothing to do with opioids.

That means they would be forever immunized from any current and future lawsuits worldwide related not only directly to Purdue’s opioids but to other drugs the company makes, including drugs for addiction reversal, high cholesterol and even constipation as a result of taking prescription opioids.

Purdue and the actions of Sackler family members, who as hands-on board members took a keen interest in drastically downplaying the addictive qualities of OxyContin in marketing efforts, have been widely implicated in the opioid epidemic.

………

At least 2,700 lawsuits and hundreds of thousands of claims have been registered against Purdue, beginning in 2014, when the opioid epidemic began to crest. The plaintiffs span a vast array including 48 states, local governments, tribes, hospitals, individuals and monitors of infants born with symptoms of withdrawal to opioids, all of whom have been ravaged and financially depleted by opioids.

In more recent years, individual Sacklers themselves have been named in a growing number of the cases.

Nearly two years ago, Purdue filed for bankruptcy restructuring, which put an automatic stay on those lawsuits. But the Sacklers themselves did not file for bankruptcy, although they insisted that they, too, benefit from the liability releases expected to be given to their company.

The issue of releases for the Sacklers and other third parties is at the heart of the resistance to the bankruptcy plan now pursued by nine states, including Maryland, Washington and Connecticut. The District of Columbia, the federal Justice Department and U.S. Trustee, a program in the Justice Department that monitors bankruptcy cases, as well as some Canadian local governments and First Nations, have joined in the objections.

According to current law in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in which Judge Drain’s court is located, the judge can grant releases to the Sacklers and other third-party individuals who have not filed for bankruptcy. But, broadly speaking, the issue is unsettled.

The Sacklers need to pay for what they did, and the forum shopping games that they played to get in front of  Judge Drain, who is notoriously friendly to corporate wrongdoers in bankruptcy cases.

There needs to be real accountability, and the ability of people like the Sacklers to use the bankruptcy code, and forum shopping, to evade the consequences of their actions is a disgrace.

Not Enough Bullets

By agreeing to pay penalties without admitting wrongdoing, the pharmaceutical companies that flooded the United States with opioids will be able to deduct billions from their taxes as a result.

Needless to say, the laws involving this need to change, pronto:

Four companies that agreed to pay a combined $26 billion to settle claims about their roles in the opioid crisis plan to deduct some of those costs from their taxes and recoup around $1 billion apiece.

In recent months, as details of the blockbuster settlement were still being worked out, pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson and the “big three” drug distributors — McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health — all updated their financial projections to include large tax benefits stemming from the expected deal, a Washington Post analysis of regulatory filings found.

The Dublin, Ohio-based Cardinal Health said earlier this month it planned to collect a $974 million cash refund because it claimed its opioid-related legal costs as a “net operating loss carryback” — a tax provision Congress included in last year’s coronavirus bailout package as a way to help companies struggling during the pandemic.

The deductions may deepen public anger toward companies that prosecutors say played key roles in a destructive public health crisis that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year. In lawsuits filed by dozens of states and local jurisdictions, public officials have argued that the companies, among other corporate defendants, flooded the country with billions of highly addictive pills and ignored signs they were being steered to people who abused them. 

Gee, you think that allowing these companies to turn their malevolent activities into tax breaks might be a bit controversial? 

………

All four firms disavow any wrongdoing or legal responsibility. The companies have said they produced government-approved prescription pills, distributed them to registered pharmacies and took steps to try to prevent their misuse.

U.S. tax laws generally restrict companies from deducting the cost of legal settlements from their taxes, with one major exception: damages paid to victims as restitution for misdeeds. Still, Congress has placed stricter limits on such deductions in recent years, and some tax experts say the Internal Revenue Service could challenge the companies’ attempts to deduct opioid settlement costs.

Harry Cullen, a Brooklyn-based activist who has worked to hold drug companies accountable for the epidemic, said it is “incredibly insulting” that companies would try deduct the settlement payments. “As if they are donating it to these people who they harmed in the first place.”

I would also note that the entire "No admission of guilt" settlement regime needs to end.

When the end result is, "No harm, no foul, pay 15% of what you made thought your evil deeds," these companies will continue to do harm to society.

Not Enough

No jail time in a settlement with McKinsey and Company for actively aiding Perdue Pharma in maximizing addictions to its opioids.

If there is a case for a corporate death penalty, this is it.

What's more there should be criminal prosecutions against its executives:

Consulting giant McKinsey & Co. has reached a $573 million settlement with states over its work advising OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and other drug manufacturers to aggressively market opioid painkillers, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal, reached with 47 states and the District of Columbia and expected to be publicly announced Thursday, would avert civil lawsuits that attorneys general could bring against McKinsey, the people said. The majority of the money will be paid upfront, with the rest dispensed in four yearly payments starting in 2022.

McKinsey said last week it is cooperating with government agencies on matters related to its past work with opioid manufacturers, as state and local governments sue companies up and down the opioid supply chain. At least 400,000 people have died in the U.S. from overdoses of legal and illegal opioids since 1999, according to federal data.

The consulting firm stopped doing opioid-related work in 2019 and said in December its work for Purdue was intended to support the legal use of opioids and help patients with legitimate medical needs.

That statement from McKinsey is a lie.  They literally suggested that druggists be paid a bonus for overdose deaths to, "Turbocharge sales." 

Shut them down.

They Are Guilty, Give Them the Death Penalty

I am referring, of course, to Purdue Pharma, who just pled guilty to pushing drugs on millions of Americans, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

They are guilty of felony murder, and should be subject to the death penalty.

I'm opposed to the death penalty for human beings, but for corporations, I'm cool with that.

Fines are not enough, and the Sackler clan needs to be reduced to penury:

Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty on Tuesday to criminal charges that it misled the federal government about sales of its blockbuster painkiller OxyContin, the prescription opioid that helped fuel a national addiction crisis. The admission brought a formal end to an extensive federal investigation that led to a multibillion-dollar settlement between the company and the Justice Department.

“The abuse and diversion of prescription opioids has contributed to a national tragedy of addiction and deaths,” Jeffrey A. Rosen, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement. “Today’s convictions underscore the department’s commitment to its multipronged strategy for defeating the opioid crisis.”

Purdue’s chairman, Steve Miller, acknowledged in a remotely conducted hearing in federal court in New Jersey that in order to meet sales goals, the company told the Drug Enforcement Administration that it had created a program to prevent OxyContin from being sold on the black market, even though it was marketing the drug to more than 100 doctors suspected of illegally prescribing OxyContin.

Purdue also pleaded guilty to paying illegal kickbacks to doctors who prescribed OxyContin and to an electronic health records company, Practice Fusion, for targeting physicians with alerts that were intended to increase opioid prescriptions. Practice Fusion has paid $145 million in fines for taking those kickbacks.

Doctors overprescribing OxyContin, along with illicit distribution of the drug, have contributed to the deaths of more than 450,000 Americans since 1999.

The premeditation for capital murder is in the underlying felony.

The company should be wiped from the earth, and the ill-gotten gains of the Sacklers should be clawed back from them.

No quarter.

This is Not Surprised Face

Is anyone here shocked that we now know that Juul was literally purchasing ads on children's cartoon shows for its vaping products?

I'm not:

Popular e-cigarette maker Juul intentionally and egregiously tailored its marketing to appeal to underage youth, according to a lawsuit filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey on February 12. The company’s early marketing in 2015 and 2016 purposefully used young, “cool” models in its launch campaign, recruited teen “influencers” on social media, and bought banner and video advertisements on numerous websites aimed at teens and children, including Cartoon Network’s cartoonnetwork.com and Nickelodeon’s sites Nick.com and NickJr.com. Juul even went so far as to give advice to underage consumers over email on how to get around age restrictions to make online purchases of the company's e-cigarettes.

The lawsuit lands as public health officials across the nation are still grappling with an explosion in e-cigarette use by youth, which the Food and Drug Administration has referred to as an “epidemic.” Between 2011 and 2019, recent use of e-cigarettes by middle schoolers increased from 0.6 percent to 10.5 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For high schoolers, use increased from 1.5 percent to 27.5 percent in that timeframe. That means that by 2019, more than 1 in every 4 high school students said they had used e-cigarettes within the last 30-days from the time of the survey.

I really hope that there are criminal prosecutions int he future, but I doubt it.

They will just pay some fines, and it will be considered a cost of doing business.

Not Enough Bullets

After misrepresenting the risks and addictive properties of Oxycontin and launching a destructive hard sell campaign, Purdue Pharma is now looking to get FDA approval of a drug that will allow them to profit from the disaster that they created:

Notorious OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma—which has been widely criticized for deceptively marketing its highly addictive painkiller and for its role in spurring the current nationwide epidemic of opioid abuse and overdose deaths—is moving ahead with a new, potent drug, one said to be an antidote to opioid overdoses.

The company announced this week that the US Food and Drug Administration has granted fast-track status to its investigational drug nalmefene hydrochloride (HCl), an injectable, emergency treatment intended to rescue people suspected of having an opioid overdose. Purdue suggests that nalmefene HCl’s effects last longer than the similar emergency opioid antagonist naloxone. As such, the company hopes nalmefene HCl will out-compete naloxone at reversing overdoses from the most highly potent opioid, namely fentanyl, which is currently driving the alarming numbers of opioid overdose deaths. The FDA’s fast-track status will speed the development and regulatory review of the drug.

………

Amid the crisis, Purdue has been fiercely condemned for initially downplaying the addictiveness of OxyContin, which it began aggressively marketing in the mid-1990s, earning the company billions of dollars in sales. In 2007, the company and three executives pleaded guilty in federal court to criminal charges that they deceived doctors, patients, and regulators over the addictiveness of the drug. Since then, Purdue has been pummeled by lawsuits blaming the company for helping to spur the rise in opioid abuse and overdoses. The company has vigorously defended itself against the claims but is now considering filing for bankruptcy, which would soften the blow of litigation and judgments.

………

Still, according to internal discussions at Purdue that were made public in a lawsuit brought by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Purdue and members of the wealthy Sackler family that owns the company had carefully researched the money-making potential of treatments aimed at reversing the epidemic.

An un-redacted section of the lawsuit describes a secret plan called Project Tango, which explored Purdue’s expansion into selling treatment options. The lawsuit states that Purdue and a member of the Sackler family determined that the millions of people who had become addicted to opioids were a prime business opportunity. Purdue staff wrote in internal documents quoted in the lawsuit that “It is an attractive market. Large unmet need for vulnerable, underserved and stigmatized patient population suffering from substance abuse, dependence and addiction.” 

Seriously, there is not a hole deep enough for these people.

Forfeit their Assets and Throw them in Jail

It looks like the family that pushed Oxycontin on the world is looking well-deserved at civil and criminal exposure:

Members of the multibillionaire philanthropic Sackler family that owns the maker of prescription painkiller OxyContin are facing mass litigation and likely criminal investigation over the opioids crisis still ravaging America.

Some of the Sacklers wholly own Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma, the company that created and sells the legal narcotic OxyContin, a drug at the center of the opioid epidemic that now kills almost 200 people a day across the US.

Suffolk county on Long Island, New York, recently sued several family members personally over the overdose deaths and painkiller addiction blighting local communities. Now lawyers warn that action will be a catalyst for hundreds of other US cities, counties and states to follow suit.

At the same time, prosecutors in Connecticut and New York are understood to be considering criminal fraud and racketeering charges against leading family members over the way OxyContin has allegedly been dangerously overprescribed and deceptively marketed to doctors and the public over the years, legal sources told the Guardian last week.

“This is essentially a crime family … drug dealers in nice suits and dresses,” said Paul Hanly, a New York city lawyer who represents Suffolk county and is also a lead attorney in a huge civil action playing out in federal court in Cleveland, Ohio, involving opioid manufacturers and distributors.

………

The Sackler name is prominently attached to prestigious cultural and academic institutions that have accepted millions donated by the family in the US and the UK. It is now inscribed on a lawsuit alleging members of the family “actively participated in conspiracy and fraud to portray the prescription painkiller as non-addictive, even though they knew it was dangerously addictive”.

………

Now Hanly and other high-profile lawyers working on opioid litigation expect the family members to be sued by name as part of the multi-district litigation in Ohio. In federal court, lawsuits filed by more than 1,200 cities, counties and municipalities across the US, against Purdue and other corporate defendants, have been brought together in the hands of federal judge Dan Polster.

………

“They’ve been hiding behind a corporate structure and it’s high time they paid a price,” he said.

Yes, it's high time.

I'd like to see them sharing cells with Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon, James Goreman, James Cayne, Dick Fuld, and Josef Ackermann, but my guess that all of them will stay free and rich.

Arbeit Macht Frei

Oklahoma and surrounding judges are sending accused criminals to slave labor camps, in particular, they get sent to Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery (CAAIR):

The worst day of Brad McGahey’s life was the day a judge decided to spare him from prison.

McGahey was 23 with dreams of making it big in rodeo, maybe starring in his own reality TV show. With a 1.5 GPA, he’d barely graduated from high school. He had two kids and mounting child support debt. Then he got busted for buying a stolen horse trailer, fell behind on court fines and blew off his probation officer.

Standing in a tiny wood-paneled courtroom in rural Oklahoma in 2010, he faced one year in state prison. The judge had another plan.

“You need to learn a work ethic,” the judge told him. “I’m sending you to CAAIR.”

McGahey had heard of Christian Alcoholics & Addicts in Recovery. People called it “the Chicken Farm,” a rural retreat where defendants stayed for a year, got addiction treatment and learned to live more productive lives. Most were sent there by courts from across Oklahoma and neighboring states, part of the nationwide push to keep nonviolent offenders out of prison.

………

There wasn’t much substance abuse treatment at CAAIR. It was mostly factory work for one of America’s top poultry companies. If McGahey got hurt or worked too slowly, his bosses threatened him with prison.

And he worked for free. CAAIR pocketed the pay.

“It was a slave camp,” McGahey said. “I can’t believe the court sent me there.”

………

But in the rush to spare people from prison, some judges are steering defendants into rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.
The programs promise freedom from addiction. Instead, they’ve turned thousands of men and women into indentured servants.

The beneficiaries of these programs span the country, from Fortune 500 companies to factories and local businesses. The defendants work at a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Oklahoma, a construction firm in Alabama, a nursing home in North Carolina.
Perhaps no rehab better exemplifies this allegiance to big business than CAAIR. It was started in 2007 by chicken company executives struggling to find workers. By forming a Christian rehab, they could supply plants with a cheap and captive labor force while helping men overcome their addictions.

………

Chicken processing plants are notoriously dangerous and understaffed. The hours are long, the pay is low and the conditions are brutal.

………

Those who were hurt and could no longer work often were kicked out of CAAIR and sent to prison, court records show. Most men worked through the pain, fearing the same fate.

………

Legal experts said forcing defendants to work for free might violate their constitutional rights. The 13th Amendment bans slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States, except as punishment for convicts. That’s why prison labor programs are legal. But many defendants sent to programs such as CAAIR have not yet been convicted of crimes, and some later have their cases dismissed.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Noah Zatz, a professor specializing in labor law at UCLA, said when presented with Reveal’s findings. “That’s a very strong 13th Amendment violation case.”

CAAIR has become indispensable to the criminal justice system, even though judges appear to be violating Oklahoma’s drug court law by using it in some cases, according to the law’s authors.

Drug courts in Oklahoma are required to send defendants for treatment at certified programs with trained counselors and state oversight. CAAIR is uncertified. Only one of its three counselors is licensed, and no state agency regulates it.

………

Men who were injured while at CAAIR rarely receive long-term help for their injuries. That’s because the program requires all men to sign a form stating that they are clients, not employees, and therefore have no right to workers’ comp. Reveal found that when men got hurt, CAAIR filed workers’ comp claims and kept the payouts. Injured men and their families never saw a dime.

………

“That’s fraudulent behavior,” said Eddie Walker, a former judge with the Arkansas Workers’ Compensation Commission. He said workers’ comp payments are required to go to the injured worker. “What’s being done is clearly inappropriate.” 

Everyone involved in this atrocity should be prosecuted to the fullest extant of the law:  The people who run CAAIR, the judges who illegally send them there, the senior executives at poultry and pet food companies who knowingly used slave labor.

This is just f%$#ing evil.

Clearly, the Problem Is Not Enough Markets

Drug rehabilitation clinics are paying brokers to get bodies in the door:

Days after he relapsed on heroin last summer, Patrick Graney received an offer that was too good to turn down.

How would he like to get treatment in a beach town with a hipster vibe in South Florida — with all expenses paid, including airfare from his Massachusetts home? Graney didn’t have to think long. He was on a flight south the next day. Two months later he was dead.

The arrangement — according to interviews with Graney’s mother and girlfriend and saved Facebook messages he sent — was brokered by Daniel Cleggett, a flamboyant figure, and some would say a pillar, in the Boston-area drug recovery community. A former addict who has spent nearly a quarter of his life in jail, Cleggett has turned entrepreneur in the burgeoning treatment industry for people addicted to opioids such as heroin and prescription painkillers.

He presides over an expanding empire of treatment facilities in Massachusetts, but he has also helped recruit addicted young people from Massachusetts for drug rehab centers in South Florida, according to the patients’ families and others who know Cleggett and are familiar with the arrangements. Two of these young men, including Graney, died from overdoses in hotel rooms in the oceanside resort communities where they were sent for treatment.

………

Patient brokers can earn up to tens of thousands of dollars a year by wooing vulnerable addicts for treatment centers that often provide few services and sometimes are run by disreputable operators with no training or expertise in drug treatment, according to Florida law enforcement officials and two individuals who worked as brokers in Massachusetts. Cleggett refused to say whether he was paid to find customers for Florida treatment centers.

The facilities are tapping into a flood of dollars made available to combat the opioid epidemic and exploiting a shortage of treatment beds in many states. As center owners and brokers profit, many patients get substandard treatment and relapse.

The role of patient brokers in steering addicts to out-of-state treatment centers is now coming under scrutiny from law enforcement, including Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, according to a spokeswoman for her office. “These recruitment operations take advantage of the desperation of people struggling with addiction to refer them to treatment centers not based on their best interest, but in order to get a commission,” Healey said in a statement. “Patients need to access safe and effective recovery options instead of being treated like paychecks.”

Such arrangements can be illegal in some cases under federal and Massachusetts law if facilities pay brokers to bring them patients and if patients are given inducements, such as free travel or insurance, to enroll in a particular treatment center.

(emphasis mine)

It seems that the only growth industry in the United States these days is parasitism.