Four Hundred Thousand
Kill one man, and you are a
murder. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you
are a god.
-
Jean Rostand
By J.M. Hamilton (9-7-2019)
Remember the name Alvin Kennard.
A name my readers are more likely
to be familiar with is the Sackler family.
Yes, those Sacklers… owners of Purdue Pharma, and the monsters who are said to have created & pushed a
national opioid pandemic (via their blockbuster analgesic, OxyContin).
No fewer than 400,000 are said to
have died over the last two decades, while the privately held, Purdue Pharma,
raked in billions in profits. By the
time doctors and authorities realized that the palliative, OxyContin, was not
as originally marketed, but rather, a highly addictive killer – and medical
professionals started cutting back on prescriptions – the addicted turned to
heroin and fentanyl with highly predictable results.
Four hundred thousand dead and
counting.
Let that sink in… and by way of
comparison: 620,000 American soldiers are estimated to have died in the Civil
War; 405,000 American soldiers estimated in WWII; 116,000 dead American service
personnel in WWI; and nearly 60,000 US war dead during Vietnam.
Somebody should warn the profiteers & warmongers at the DOD/MIC, as well as, America’s enemies… they have
competition. That competitor's name is
Sackler. Per the CDC, the Sackler
manufactured crisis cost the American economy nearly $80 billion, per annum, in
lost productivity, healthcare, and via the criminal justice industrial complex.
Please remember this $80 billion figure when our crony US courts begin handing out obscenely small fines, to the
perpetrators of this artisanally crafted form of American genocide.
With great power comes great
responsibility. American multinationals
have seen their power grow extensively over the last several decades. Power, among US multinationals, has grown in
ways too numerous to count, but let’s try anyway. There’s the buying of elections, via Citizens
United. There’s government and
regulatory capture, whereby the US Congress and regulatory agencies are afraid
to act in any manner to protect small to mid-sized businesses, the consumer,
labor, and the economy – from oligopolistic & monopolistic predations - for
fear of upsetting the donor class (i.e. high-net-worth-individuals &
multinationals). Antitrust enforcement?
Forget about it. M&A and industry consolidation has skyrocketed, enabled by the Fed’s
ultra-accommodative monetary policies.
The least understood, and perhaps
the most powerful branch of government, The Federal Reserve, seemingly, has a
slavish devotion to Wall Street banks & private equity, financial markets, and inflating asset
classes for the plutocracy… but everyone else is not so fortunate, as wage &
wealthy inequality climb ever higher (In fact, the Fed is, arguably, directly responsible for wage
deflation; a period of highly accommodative monetary policy has certainly coincided, if not correlates, with ordinary Americans' diminishing fortunes). Large scale businesses are
nearly always given the benefit the doubt, and a regulatory pass, all too often
w/ detrimental outcomes: See Big Oil; Big
Tobacco; Monsanto and its top seller, Roundup; Wall Street banks and private
equity; Boeing and the 737 MAX; and the criminal law industrial complex &
private prisons (just to name a few examples).
The growth in corporate power
& earnings has not been accompanied by greater accountability. Responsibility seems to be missing w/ the extraordinary
power afforded these leviathans, and corporate criminal conduct & social costs are nearly exclusively passed
on to our bankrupt federal government & the taxpayer.
And as crony capitalism, industry consolidation, AI, globalization, and
automation have done quite a number on job creation… and as we saw w/ the 2008
Wall Street crisis, many of these organizations are considered too big to fail,
and their management teams too important to jail.
This has to end, if large scale
business is to redeem itself in the eyes of America and the world.
Now comes word that the Sacklers
want to strike a deal. They
want to retain a personal fortune estimated at $13 billion but agree to forfeit
Purdue Pharma ownership. They want at least 2,000 lawsuits, brought by various
state, local, and regulatory authorities, consolidated at the Federal level. The Sacklers are offering a $10 to $12 billion
settlement, in which they will kick-in between $3 to $4.5 billion, in part, predicated on the
eventual sale of a Cambridge, UK based, Mundipharma (a pharmaceutical company also owned by the Sacklers).
And there’s the rub: The Sacklers
want to continue their opioid racket outside the US, utilizing their foreign
based multinational. Several state level
AGs aren’t having it. Meanwhile, the NY
Times and CBS News report the Sacklers have been syphoning off billions in cash, from Purdue Pharma, and sending same offshore through a byzantine web of
companies, LLCs, trusts, and landholdings.
It’s all very interesting, and
will soon, undoubtedly, be a case study w/in MBA textbooks throughout academia. The Sacklers and Purdue Pharma define: The
Neo-Gilded Age we are living through, the greed is good mentality, and the profits before all ethos that the Business Roundtable recently denounced.
So how does a society stop this
behavior, this pathological illness?
What can be done to set an example & a precedent, so that future Sacklers don’t rack
up a body count that makes global war & homicidal dictators look tame, or
Wall Street greed doesn’t destroy the global economy, again:
1) Surrendering
all their business holdings is a great start.
JMH is not a fan of nationalization, per se. Better that Purdue Pharma be set up as a
not-for-profit, and remain out of the clutches of government and corrupt politicians
(as reported in the NY Times, and many years later, only a small fraction of the multi-billion-dollar Big Tobacco settlement has found its way to educating the public on tobacco related health risks ... and only 5% of the billions allocated for smoking cessation programs has been spent). Give the renamed Purdue its mission
statement and objectives and let ‘er run for the benefit of all (but
particularly the victims and their families).
As a writer in the American Prospect suggested, perhaps competing
against other pharmaceutical companies, by selling generic medicine at cost.
2) Criminal
charges must be brought against the Sacklers.
What they did is nothing short of mass murder. Here, there’s safety & strength in numbers & pooled resources. If enough district attorneys & AGs band together
and bring criminal charges… it will send a real message that nobody is above
the law. The Sackler family – up to
eight are said to have served on Purdue Pharma’s board, at one time – need to
spend the rest of their lives in jail.
Hanging, quite simply, is too good for them. Of course, round the clock surveillance will
be required for these prisoners… after all, we don’t want them pulling an
Epstein (or find prison officials caught sleeping on duty, while an “Epstein event” occurs).
3) All the
Sackler family wealth is forfeit. That
is every penny, every euro, every gold ingot, every security/bond, each and
every scrap of land forfeit and redistributed to the victims’ families. Unfortunately, the Sacklers not only looted
Purdue Pharma – undoubtedly, in anticipation of their present date w/ destiny - but
they sent nearly all the booty offshore.
Which brings us to recommendation number four.
4) Offshore
money is outside US purview, that is outside US judges’ jurisdictions. So what to do, what to do? Well, during the 20th Century,
world governments thought it important enough to start up an international
tribunal to handle crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, and crimes of
aggression. Perhaps it’s time to establish an international tribunal against
corporate crimes against humanity? Such a tribunal would have jurisdiction over all states & multinationals and have the ability to
confiscate blood money and ill-gotten gains from any financial institution,
haven, or jurisdiction in the world, as well as, pass judgement and sentencing for criminal conduct. If found guilty, clawback provisions for profits multinationals have distributed to shareholders would be key. (Corporations and multinationals – via free trade agreements - have successfully set up their own rigged extra- judicial bodies, or arbitration panels, w/ which to attack national sovereignty… a
manifestation of the profits before people ethos. These panels will not do.)
It
really is time to the level the playing field, globally, and set up a supranational court
to adjudicate multinational criminal behavior, tax avoidance, and crimes
against humanity, and w/ that establish a body of law.
The Sacklers are now social pariahs. Academia,
foundations, the humanities/arts, philanthropies… nobody will take the Sacklers’
blood money. Their name will forever be
associated with ignominy, and carnage & greed on a horrific scale. (And what's really crazy, OxyContin is a valuable medicine in a doctor's arsenal to control & mitigate pain. The Sacklers - yes, would have earned less - but all they had to do was effectively/properly warn society of the drug's addictive qualities.)
But what does one expect from a
racist Republican state, like Alabama?
Instead, in a more just society,
the Sacklers will take Mr. Kennard’s place and serve the balance of their lives
in hell, w/in the US penal system.
That’s the kind of justice
Americans crave; that’s the kind of justice Americans are going to need to see,
as the first steps towards real corporate and multinational accountability &
reform: economically, governmentally, and judicially.
And given that the Business
Roundtable has found its conscience… perhaps the nation’s brightest CEOs could
advocate same?
It’s time for plutocrats – living
in the shadows – to realize that they are not gods, but rather, mere mortals,
subject to the rule of law & societal standards. If anything, perhaps the ultra-wealthy should hold themselves to a higher ethical standard, in regards their business and financial affairs?
Copyright JM
Hamilton Publishing 2019
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