When I am president, several of the people mentioned in this article will be considered suspected accomplices to murder and be potentially liable for every pain pill addiction resulting from the law they created to protect the drug industry from regulation and liability. The Nuremberg Trials seem like a decent precedent.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
The concept of public good seems to be gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M7HHdn-gcY
See also the vote on importing drugs from Canada, where some Democrats basically repeated words straight from PHARMA.
The system is corrupt.
Big Pharma is the one US industry that needs a tariff.
There is no reason to allow them to make drugs cheaper in Canada, Mexico, or India. Big Pharma can probably make drugs cheap here with automation/tech, create jobs, and still post a big profits.
Many of the drugs we are talking about are made in the US and exported to Canada. They are cheaper in Canada than in the US because Canada has a better health care system.
Place of manufacturer has nothing to do with it.
Honestly I don’t understand your comment at all.
But as we know from the fast food and car industries, it’s not enough to have “big profits” — nothing must impinge profits (or, more specifically, executive and board/shareholder compensation) in the slightest; not costs, price reductions, employee/union demands, safety/environmental concessions…nothing.
Just ask McDonalds. The mere suggestion that they pay their low-level employees anything resembling a living wage (let alone let them organize or lobby for health benefits) has them recoiling in horror: are we suggesting that they raise prices? (And lose their precious market share?) The idea that they could compensate by just slightly reducing the millions paid to their CEO and top management — cutting back on private jet travel; decreasing the number of homes or cars — is the foulest blasphemy. What are you, a socialist? Are you trying to destroy America and its sacred “free market”?
who, while Obamacare was under construction and debate, publicly opposed it, stating it would force him to raise the price of a large pizza something on the order of 20 fucking cents.
$0.20!
And your employees don’t already have health coverage!?!?
What an asshole.
Papa John’s hasn’t seen a penny out of me since.
I believe one of my senators, Michael Bennet, was one of them.
and Hatch stink to high heaven (like that dead skunk in the middle of the road).
Confessing disgust kept me from making it all the way through the article, so maybe there were even worse (though that’s hard for me to imagine)?
You appear to have a solid case.
At least Marino suffered the consequence of having to withdraw his nomination for “drug czar.” That’s nowhere near enough, but at least it’s something.
Why are Lynch and Obama staying silent?
Maybe bc they’re bought off, like everyone else?
Too Manichean for me.
It would be heaven for Trump if Obama gave any indication that Trump was getting under his skin or insulting him. Smart of Trump to deny him that.
You mean smart of Obama?
Yeh, “Damn that Obama! I pissed all over him again! Why won’t he react?!?”
Yes. I meant Obama.
Its disgusting, especially when you think of the hundreds of billions spent on the “war on drugs” and all the moralizing from many of the same people who paved the way for pharmaceutical companies to peddle drugs illegally.
War on Drugs adversely affects minorities the most. This, in turn & in large part, has dramatically increased our prison population. The Prison Industrial Complex donates huge buck$$ to D and R pols, alike.
The prison industrial complex is a great slave labor system at this time.
Newly minted Sainted Savior Kamala Harris was all IN for opposing early releases from CA’s over-populated prisons because of cheap, enforced, slave labor:
https:/thinkprogress.org/california-attorney-general-says-her-offices-defense-of-prison-labor-evoke
s-chain-gangs-5c768fd447a4
Welcome to the same old, same old NeoLib politicians from oh so “progressive” CA.
Why does an associate at a large law firm leave to join the JAG?
Everyone who has worked at a large law firm can answer that question.
BECAUSE HE WAS FIRED!
What boggles my mind is that there are people so willing to sell out principles for money. Flying first class or even on one’s own jet plane, how does one enjoy the experience knowing that his/her choices have destroyed countless lives?
How much money does one need? If I lived in a 100 room mansion, I could still only sleep in one bed and use one bathroom at a time.
Sociopaths and psychopaths do not think the way you and I do.
And our society and political system encourages this type of thinking and behavior.
They are rewarded for behaving this way, and there are typically very few consequences.
See also, Weinstein, Harvey. He’s only just NOW experiencing some consequences to his egregious behavior over decades. Oh boo hoo. He was kicked off the Academy, while Bill Cosby was not.
Oh boo hoo. Weinstein can sit around counting his filthy lucre until the day he dies, and his wife – who probably knew very well what her rat bastard husband was up to but benefited handsomely from her alliance with him – may see her company crash and burn. But she will also spending her days counting her filthy lucre.
Again: very very few consequences for these types of behaviors, and the rewards are plentiful and ample.
Somebody signed that bill.
It passed by unanimous consent. The fact is, people didn’t really understand the purpose of it, including the administration. I was in contact with the administration for several years on issues related to opioids, was included on off and on the record calls, and basically still feel that they were committed to doing something. Getting Congress to act wasn’t really much of an option, at least in a meaningful way, so they were trying to come up with other solutions.
How this slipped through and how the DEA was corrupted on their watch is actually more terrifying as a result of what I know, because it wasn’t indifference or even complicity at the top. It was more scary than that.
That strikes me as a massively important point, and a real bookend to LGC’s quote, “We judge ourselves by our intentions (what we think motivates us), but others judge us by our actions (what we in fact do).”
‘We judge ourselves by our intentions, but others judge us by the actions we’re permitted to take by the deeply flawed institutions to which we belong’ isn’t quite as snappy …
The reason Democrats don’t have a differentiated as opposed to just a `non-Republican’ brand is shit like this, plus the bankruptcy bill, the gutlessness on card check, and the callous indifference to homeowners during the Great Recession, instead favoring `foaming the runway’ for the banks.
There’s a great quote from a psychologist I once read:
`We judge ourselves by our intentions (what we think motivates us), but others judge us by our actions (what we in fact do).”
`Trying’ to do good does not count if you `in fact’ capitulate to evil. And when that happens you aren’t good, you’re not even indifferent, you’re an accomplice.
There’s a lot of judging themselves by their general intentions by the Democratic establishment while there’s a lot judgment by the 50 State electorates by their actions.
“`We judge ourselves by our intentions (what we think motivates us), but others judge us by our actions (what we in fact do).”
Great comment.
We’re really a very corrupt country, we’ve just legalized the corruption.
I think that is a very insightful assertion. The thing I could never understand is what the strategy was for dealing with the inevitable consequences. Had none of the conspirators considered this? In this case, when the morgues where filled to overflowing, what magical words would conjure away the bodies?
What’s interesting is how that knowledge effects our politics.
Booman wrote a piece here defending Booker on his vote against the drug importation bill. Basically in the end he was arguing that a Senator from New Jersey should be expected to be in PHARMA’s pocket.
Lawrence Lewis at DKOS repeatedly said any NY Senator must defend Wall Street. Dick Durbin famously said “banks own this place”.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/29/dick-durbin-banks-frankly_n_193010.html
And on and on and on.
The corruption is so ingrained we reflexively make excuses for our politicians.
Please add the folks voting to eliminate healthcare access and climate deniers to your list. Thank you.
Made it thru the 60 minutes segment last night. Disgusting, especially all the DEA lawyers who jumped ship to protect the distributors from the law. Thought we were supposed to fear Mexican gals with calves the size of cantaloupes who were bringing in all the drugs; not Fortune 500 companies.
Once on a plane sat next to an 80 year old dude who decided to tell me his life story. He had made a fortune producing Oxycontin. I think he made a bigger fortune by developing and selling software to get thru FDA paperwork. He said they sold the software to six of the seven major pharmas. He was concerned that interest rates are too damn low so he only has so many hundreds of thousands to spend each year, what with the kids and grand kids wanting their share. As we were parting ways he hollered, “Isn’t Trump Great!” I smiled, wondering how many people his pills and software helped kill.
I can understand the logic to these arguments — we took away a useful tool of the DEA which made things potentially worse in favor of fat cat pharmaceutical manufacturers. And maybe this is correct. Certainly the people behind this change are not forces for good but corrupt scumbags. But giving more money to the DEA and cracking down on opioids gives rise to heroin/fentanyl, and I am skeptical of any argument (by nature) that would empower their agency.
This was reported by Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone last year.