In recent decades, ballot initiatives that allow the public to vote directly on a legal change have proved a significantly faster way to get something done than the legislative process. Indeed, in some US states initiatives that become law are subsequently stymied by the legislative or executive branches. In an era of instantaneous networked communication, the traditional model of governance and the informal party structure seem to function more as tools to divide and conquer the population than to implement its policy aspirations.
Fair point, but direct democracy is also subject to the passions of the masses overriding the concerns of experts. Faster isn't always better.
E.g. by individually-benefit-but-mass-cost initiatives ("Vote yes if you want $1"), exploiting insufficient education ("To enshrine wildlife management into our constitution" that actually permits nature exploitation), or overly emotional issues-of-the-day ("Increase national security powers" after a terrorist attack).
Though it seems like the sheer organizational barrier to ballot inclusion (i.e. mass signature collection) limit the worst excesses of the above.
In modern times, direct ballot initiatives definitely have their place in a functioning democracy, although perhaps with high barriers to listing, maximum numbers per ballot, and cool-down periods ("Will be on the ballot X years from now").
Indeed! Which is why counterbalance and dampening of oscillation are desirable features in a system of government. But you over-emphasize that, and you get a government incapable of action.
passions of the masses overriding the concerns of experts
That is an issue, but I wasn't advocating for the inherent superiority of referenda over legislative process, only that it's more practical to get something done. It's probably faster to get yourself elected than it is to lobby elected officials on some abstract or distributed issue where there isn't an obvious coalition.
I don't disagree with your other ideas, except for the cool-down period. While that can certainly be abused, asking people to sign up for something that can't be manifested for several years into the future is an instant demotivator to any action.
Having said that, I think the entire election machinery and so on could usefully be replaced by digital voting, and managed on an ongoing basis rather than at infrequent intervals; a wikiocracy, so to speak. It will have flaws, limitations, and be subject to abuse, but representative democracy as practiced in most places is a 16th-18th century political technology that is manifestly inadequate for 21st century polities.
I'm not being snarky, but this can all be reductively boiled down to "we shouldn't let people self-govern, because they don't know what's good for them."
I posit an opposing viewpoint: people know what they want; why get in their way -- you're not their parents. Take care of your intimates and close ones, but let other people live their lives in their enclaves, bubbles, and so on -- self-governing as they please.
Will they do and believe in things that you personally wouldn't? Yes. Will some of those things end up being terribly offensive to your sensibilities (morals/ethics/beliefs, what have you)? Most likely.
Under direct voting, if you see something that you believe to be terribly bad being brought out onto the floor, you are free to organize amongst your community to strike it down (or do the reverse, and bring forth an initiative you believe to be good). But that also opens up the possibility that no one will want what you want, and your initiatives will fail. At that point, you can either accept it, and go on with your life, or -- in these globalized times -- move somewhere else with people that share your views.
Generally, if you don't completely disintegrate the community through various means (as is popular in the U.S., see: globalized workforce), they can self-govern in a way that is sustainable and that fulfills their best interests. This is how humanity has survived for countless thousands of years.
Better yet, give back to the people the means for self-sufficiency, and you will soon see that national/federal power wanes, as there is little need for external forces to keep a community alive and thriving. "Vote yes if you want $1 (fine-print: by also giving us logging rights to your forests)" is easily prevented by: a close-knit and cohesive community with a group "mind." Your community leaders will tell you it's a swindle, and to drive out anyone that comes with such a proposition. Of course, that would lessen the amount of exploitation the individual receives by higher powers -- thereby "shorting" these same powers of their self-justified right over the individual (and his resources). I.e. a lot of powerful people's plans and careers and goals will be upended -- and that's a no-no.
The argument in favor of self-sufficiency/independence lasts as long as there's virgin land and resources available.
As soon as things turn into a zero sum game, consumption by definition deprives another, and there needs to be a better method of allocation than first/strongest.
To me, that's what restraints on direct democracy are -- ensuring that even those without numbers/power/pathos can get a fair shake. Because the best for everyone doesn't always come attached to the most of any of those.
E.g. I fail to be able to describe a scenario where raising taxes would ever win a straight democratic vote, even if it were a blatantly existential crisis for a nation.
> I fail to be able to describe a scenario where raising taxes would ever win a straight democratic vote, even if it were a blatantly existential crisis for a nation.
I think the original point was that on a sufficiently small scale, this isn't true. I was in an HOA that raised the fees, because the reserve funds got down to under $10k.
The ballot initiative system is a major part of why California is such a dysfunctional shithole. Let's please not bring that godawful mess anywhere else.
The southern district of New York was doing judicial activism and the second circuit of appeals was not?
Since both things are humans talking about their interpretations of text, can you ELI5 why one was rooted in activism and the other was rooted in objectivity?
So when the mega wealthy control the laws and politicians and then you come to me asking how we should get the laws and politicians so what we want, what do you expect me to say?
I’m not suggesting anything about bankruptcy. I’m saying it’s foolish to think voting will make this right
"Voting" is certainly not a standalone answer to "how to get Congress to change laws."
As you say, it's not gonna be easy to change politicians' minds... so doing nothing certainly won't do it.
You can pick defeatism or you can get creative. Step 1 in the US as it is is probably "find your own connected people with access to money and work on getting them involved."
It takes a long time, but I'd start with studying the anti-abortion movement, the environment or climate ones, or the ones around sexuality. Those are all fields where the laws of the land have moved.
Purdue manufactured opioids in measured doses without unsafe adulterants.
Guess what? Junkies lived. Turns out that when they get a clean high manufactured by competent pharmaceutical engineers, they tend not to be found catatonic by callous law enforcement who say "fuck it" and refuse to save their lives with the naloxone they have with them.
When did junkies start dying? With the supply of oxy dried up because the DEA shut down pill mills, they had no other options than dirty street heroin that it turns out is mostly just fentanyl and carfentanyl.
I have no clue how this is considered an improvement by the media that reports on such things, or why so many are so eager to buy it.
If El Chapo started selling clean/safe drugs that didn't kill people, how the fuck would he be anything other than a goddamned hero? How many are dying of overdoses every week again?
When a company pursues to market an addictive drug, and knowingly sells it to counties that had 5 to 10 times more opioid prescriptions than people, that's illegal and that should be stopped.
Knowing this and allowing them to do it anyway would be a dystopia I want no part of.
Just because you feel a certain way, doesn't mean you should act on it -- you're bound to make a less-than-optimal decision when emotions get in the way.
The above is the equivalent of finding out your child has been an alcoholic for the past decade, and abruptly shutting down all liquor stores in your town.
Your child is going to start having seizures, and your town will be incredibly irritated at you for being so hasty.
Let's stop using analogies since they can be atrocious. Your analogy ("Oh it's just like alcohol") is even more so. Alcohol poisoning deaths are a rounding error compared to actual opioid deaths.
Death from alcohol ODs are around 2400/year. The last year of opioid deaths from OD's in 2022 were 106,000.
The analogy is apt, because those opioid deaths are a direct result of someone taking advantage of others' emotions to set wide-sweeping policy, with no regard for anyone else -- causing drastic harm to people.
This is no different from the example above.
Pharmaceutical companies push opioids on doctors -> doctors push opioids onto people -> someone gets uppity and decides something should be done now -> opioid access is quickly curtailed -> people now need to get their fix because pharmaceutical companies have upregulated their opioid receptors, causing life to be living hell -> people go acquire opioids through the black market -> it's laced with fent and then people die
Alcohol poisoning was common in the bootleg era, when some people got uppity and decided something must be done now about alcohol -- and people do as people do, went to go get their fix from shady suppliers with tainted product; then they were seriously injured or killed.
Death-by-opiate/opioid-overdose shrank while they were selling this. Shutting down the pill mills killed people. Like, more people are dying now than otherwise would. And you're ok with that?
I guess when the DEA makes up bullshit, you're just happy to parrot it.
> Knowing this and allowing them to do it anyway would be a dystopia I want no part of.
You're in the dystopia now. You're just insulated from it. Something close to 100,000 people will this year because they're using dirty street drugs and fucking elephant tranquilizer instead of Purdue's safe drugs.
WTF. I wish I got to live in a world where evil was committed by supervillains doing it deliberately, rather than this clownworld where people do it and think they're the good guys. You should be ashamed of yourself. Go do some fucking self-reflection.
You're absolutely correct, prohibition is what is actually causing all of the overdose deaths. If we had a legal and regulated system of drugs then the supply would be high quality and consistent and people would know exactly what they were getting
Mexican cartels have started inserting themselves into legal businesses like farming within their territory, increasing prices and taking the resulting profits.
And here rests another piece of the legitimacy of our government.
From time to time you see the latest Corruption Perception Index scores come out [1] and the USA always ranks among the least corrupt countries.
That's due to the difficulties in defining corruption. Here in the USA I think there is very little illegal corruption that happens. Very few people avoid a speeding ticket by greasing the palm of a police officer.
Instead we have stuff like this, where a powerful family, aided by the most prestigious management consultants [2] kill and addict millions of citizens, but they took steps to ensure the law accommodated their evil, and protected them afterwards. It's not technically corruption because they worked within the system to pass their laws and peddle their dope.
So then it's not just local police, or a local government, or even one administration that people see is corrupt and working against us, but the entire system of government, 'by the people, for the people' has somehow been perverted, and turned into a sham.
And then these same villains see how the people have no mechanism to fight back, they see all we can do is roll over and take it, and it inspires them to think about what they can get away with next.
In all honesty while they rank the US as low on a corruption-scale globally they do capture a fair amount of the corruption in the US. The US has similar scores to Bhutan and Seychelles not Denmark and Canada.
As for the case itself, it seems the court wants to protect the settlement because they know it's unlikely they will be able to pierce the veil of corporate protection and go after the owner's for the $5.5-$6 billion that is only voluntarily contributed if the settlement works. In considering the greater good I think the win of $5.5-$6 billion in additional settlement money for victims is a greater good than the restrictions on potential lawsuits against the Sacklers is an evil. Ideally any victims who had their rights restricted by this clause would have an option to be a late joiner of the settlement and could ensure compensation that way.
I think cases like this are outside the scope of the Corruption Perceptions Index. At least, your wikipedia link describes it as: (*emphasis* mine)
> The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) is an index which ranks countries "by their perceived levels of *public sector corruption*, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.
From skimming the court order, it seems that this is an instance of private sector corruption. In 2004, the Purdue board (which included at least 6 Sackler family members) created a policy to indemnify the board, executives, and some others against any claims/suits/etc. There was a narrow carve-out where a court decision that someone acted in "bad faith" would void the indemnification.
The adage "we have a legal system, not a justice system" is repeated ad nauseam in these cases. But thinking about it: what if we were to have none, neither legality, nor justice, but simply randomness, fiat fortuna, et pereat mundus [1].
An example in this case would be: instead of all the boring legalese, the high-paid BigCons [2], and the unfulfillable expectation of pristine judgements, to have just a coin flip: 50% chance for guilty, 10 years jail, 50% chance free as a bird. Skew it even further, for every person killed or $1 million stolen add some percentages to the guilty chance and some years to the penalty. Solve every lawsuit in a matter of seconds, nothing to debate [3], no false belief of fairness or equity, just sheer, dumb luck, for the society or for the accused.
Lobbying... that's the kind of corruption that's enshrined in the first amendment, right? So important they didn't even leave it for the second or third or tenth amendments? The amendments which are collectively known as the Bill of Rights, or the United States' founder's first attempt at crafting a list of fundamental human rights?
The problem isn't that corporations are people. If corporations exist, it's difficult to have them not be "people" for the purposes of laws.
The problem is that they exist at all. Nothing in the Constitution says that the government (of Delaware, no less) should have the legitimate power to wave a magic wand and create fictitious legal entities that are effectively immortal but are born without a moral compass.
If it did have that legitimate power, then it's still bad that it can happen for the payment of a $250 fee and filing of a stack of legal paperwork.
Everything that the whiny lefties gripe about with capitalism is actually the fault of corporations, not capitalism. Sounds like you're ok with them existing though, you just think that's possible with them a "little less powerful" or something.
Baby steps. I'm not going to recommend the complete nullification of corporations in the present. Perhaps as a long-term goal to aim towards -- but with the right planning and support. No sense in being a revolutionary.
Perhaps start off with removing the corporate veil. Officers of corporations (or any incorporated entity) are now personally liable for what goes on. This could pave the way for trimming down extra-national entities like multinational corps (the risk is immense for there to be bodies buried in various dark corners of huge corporations -- only the insane would take on these positions).
> Baby steps. I'm not going to recommend the complete nullification of corporations in the present. Perhaps as a long-term goal to aim towards -- but with the right planning and support. No sense in being a revolutionary.
Why would you ever work towards it as a long term goal? Once your faction had even a little political power, you'd have more control over corporations. And they're quite powerful in their way. They'd become too appealing at that point.
Much more fun to tame the godzilla monster and sic it on your enemies.
Lobbying can be murky but is not comparable to raw corruption like in third-world countries. Anyone is free to lobby a politician...if I call my local representative or Senator and press them about an issue, then I'm lobbying. Equating it with corruption frankly indicates ignorance.
But do you think it would poise a difference in consideration if you had a few millions that could be directed to campaign contributions? How do you think this fares agaisnt a vote for a certain matter? What about an issue that the average voter would need some research to fully understand what's at play? It fathoms me that you can't see the asymmetry. I wouldn't call that murky at all, but an atrocity.
As an aside, those with large net worths should consider bankruptcy planning. It's not really "fun" but nobody intends to go bankrupt, and states vary widely in what is excluded, especially in the homestead exemption.
For example, Florida, DC, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas have unlimited (of various flavors, for example Texas is 100/200 acres rural (single/family) or 1 acre urban). Most require something like 40 months living, but consult an advisor.
This seems like an actual bit of planning for the wealthy done not by themselves but their advisors. Some people might be down voting for it being cynical, but you know that those that have money have paid people to consider every possible angle at how to not only protect their money but turn a profit in situations that would otherwise devastate an average person.
The very wealthy certainly use it (the most famous case being OJ Simpson) but even if you're not 1% wealthy, but have assets, you should at least consider it. Especially if you're looking to move anyway, it could be a factor.
> Annual bankruptcy filings in calendar year 2022 totaled 387,721, compared with 413,616 cases in 2021, according to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.
There are all sorts of techniques/tricks/hacks (depending on your style) of using the system that does not require 1% kind of income. Sort of that line from The Firm, "I want to bend the law as far as I can without breaking it." You can form a corp and place all of your assets in it, then have your employer hire the corp and not you so you earn no income. You don't own a house, but your corp does and allows you to stay there. Stuff that sounds shady AF, but is legal but might require you to spend a few hours going over paperwork with members of the gov't from time to time
Being unaware of some of the details of this saga, I'm floored to read the following:
pg. 17
> Starting in 2007, the Sacklers anticipated that the effects of litigation against Purdue would eventually impact them directly. See, e.g., Deferred Joint App’x at 5059 (David Sackler emailed Jonathan and Richard Sackler, “We will be sued . . . . [A]sk yourself how long it will take these lawyers to figure out that we might settle with them if they can freeze our assets and threaten us.”). From 2008 to 2016, Purdue distributed a significant proportion of the company’s revenue—an approximated $11 billion in total—to Sackler family trusts and holding companies. This represented an increase in the distribution pattern from years prior and “drained Purdue’s total assets by 75% and Purdue’s ‘solvency cushion’ by 82%” during that same time period.
pg. 25
> In applying the Iridium factors, the bankruptcy court observed that, in this case, counsel on both sides were experienced and formidable. Id. at 86–87. Over 95% of the voters approved the Plan, showing clear creditor support, and the potential difficulty in collecting from the Sacklers and their related entities on any successfully litigated claims was an issue of “significant concern.” Id. at 89. The court noted that while the Sacklers are worth approximately $11 billion, they are a large family whose assets are “widely scattered and primarily held” in spendthrift trusts—both offshore and in the United States—that are largely unreachable via bankruptcy proceedings.9 Id. at 88. Moreover, certain members of the Sackler family live “outside of the territorial jurisdiction of the United States and might not have subjected themselves sufficiently to the U.S.” such that a U.S. court would have personal jurisdiction over them. Id. And, perhaps most importantly, according to the court, continued litigation—even if it were limited to the claims at issue—would be extremely expensive and lead to delays. Id. at 89– 90. Thus, the court reasoned, an order against confirmation would not only destroy the entire settlement but would also result in a major escalation of costs and time.
The argument the bankruptcy court made - and which this decision upholds - appears to boil down to "they've been so successful at squirreling away the $11bn they took out of the company that we probably can't get it back, so we shouldn't try; letting them get away with it yields more for creditors".
Yikes. I guess this makes it legal to do the following:
- Start a company, do something really bad, and make a lot of money.
- Before you get sued, take the money out and hide it in offshore accounts.
- Get sued, declare bankruptcy, and return a small fraction of the money as "goodwill" in exchange for a release of claims.
And, oh, have really good lawyers so that the court calls your counsel "experienced and formidable", enough to make coming after you too expensive to even consider.
> Moreover, certain members of the Sackler family live “outside of the territorial jurisdiction of the United States and might not have subjected themselves sufficiently to the U.S.” such that a U.S. court would have personal jurisdiction over them
Bin Laden lived outside US jurisdiction too, but that didn't stop the US from going after him. The Sacklers have been responsible for way more than the 3000 deaths that OBL caused.
> Thus, the court reasoned, an order against confirmation would not only destroy the entire settlement but would also result in a major escalation of costs and time.
Of course, these considerations don't come into effect when it's a, say, a poor Black guy caught for shoplifting $50 worth of goods; then it's "lets throw the book at him and lock him up for a dozen years!", even though locking someone up can cost upwards of $50K/year in places like California.
The difference between you, me, the poor black guy caught for shoplifting $50 worth of goods, Bin Laden, and The Sacklers is their connections to the Israeli ruling parties and intelligence services. In turn, those services are affiliated with AIPAC. AIPAC in turn heavily influences American politics.
Steven Rosen, the former AIPAC official, illustrates AIPAC's power for the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg by putting a napkin in front of him and saying, "In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin." As Mearsheimer and Walt make clear, this is no idle boast, and they go on to say, "As will become clear, when issues relating to Israel come to the fore, Congress almost always votes to endorse the lobby's positions, usually in overwhelming numbers".
They note AIPAC President Howard Friedman telling the organization's members in August 2006, "AIPAC meets with every candidate running for Congress. These candidates receive in depth briefings to help them completely understand the complexities of Israel's predicament and that of the Middle East as a whole. We ask each candidate to author a "position paper" on their views of the U.S.-Israel relationship - so it is clear where they stand on the subject."
One congressional candidate (Harry Lonsdale) who went through this vetting process recounts that, "I found myself invited to AIPAC in Washington, D.C. fairly early in the campaign, for "discussions". It was an experience I will never forget. It wasn't enough that I was pro-Israel. I was given a list of vital topics and quizzed (read grilled) for my specific opinion on each. Actually I was told what my opinion must be, and exactly what words I was to use to express those opinions in public..... Shortly after that encounter at AIPAC, I was sent a list of American supporters of Israel..... that I was free to call for campaign contributions. I called, they gave, from Florida to Alaska."
AIPAC also keeps track of congressional voting records and direct funds to opponents of congressmen who don't follow their line.
Apart from Congress, Mearsheimer and Walt show successful Jewish activists in key government positions (particularly from the 1970's onwards), such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrahams, David Wurmser and Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the Clinton and Bush administrations. This political combination managed to steer George Bush, sideline Condoleeza Rice, and bully Colin Powell into the Iraq war . The authors show the enormous frustration of the CIA as their intelligence was distorted to support the lie of Iraqi WMD and start an unprovoked war that was not in the interests of the United States.
A feeble Congress votes record aid budgets to Israel (currently four billion dollars a year), with loans being converted to grants, and quick acquiescences to Israeli demands that aid be paid up front (which means the U.S. has to borrow it to give to them), and to the Israeli refusal to account for how it was spent, both necessary conditions for other aid recipients.
The whole process is supported by Jewish Think Tank activists such as Daniel Pipes, Michael Rubin, and Joshua Muravchik at the American Enterprise Institute, and prominent journalists such as William Kristol, Michael Ladeen and Norman Podhoretz who are now agitating for America to declare war on Iran (and subsequently Syria and Saudi Arabia although they are not so open about this).
In their conclusion, Mearsheimer and Walt ask what can be done about the outlandish failure of the American government to act in the interests of America. They doubt that the Israel Lobby will relinquish its power in the press, campaign finance or government, so they suggest pressure for more open discourse, which seems to be happening. It was initially impossible to publish this book in America but it did eventually see the light of day after an article in the London Review of Books and an unprcedented 275.000 downloads of the working paper on Harvard's Kennedy School of Government website.
The authors see the (remote) possibility of congressmen treating Israel like any other country and they also show that the majority of American Jews aren't Likudniks and opposed the war in Iraq. They didn't like the AIPAC / Wolfowitz group but of course they lost out to the activists, so its not clear where all this goes, apart from generating some rumbling at the other end of the spectrum (for example, Robert Griffin's, "The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds" ). At present, Israel is greatly favoured while congress directs America to carry the massive cost of her wars in addition to generous transfers of aid.
This sounds like conspiracy drivel. AIPAC is an influential lobby like many other lobbies focused on different issues. Making it look like like a villain controlling congressmen as puppets is delusional..
Given that White House staff [0] is 32% Jewish (2.4% of US) and only 24% non-Jewish white (55% of US) [1], the allegations raised by that post seem very plausible.
[0] Roles such as policy advisors, director of congressional outreach, director of labor engagement, etc., not security or housekeeping.
This is not a new result, it is just the first time that a Court of Appeals had to actually say it out loud. Also, the point of bankruptcy is to yield the most possible value for the creditors, it is an integral component of the balancing test for confirmation of proposed settlement for resolution of the proceedings. I'm not a fan of the outcome or the process, but this is just a case of the law working as intended.
These people indirectly killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, and impacted millions more, creating a drug epidemic. Our elected representatives, especially the GOP want to let them run free. It's sick thinking they still breathe free air after poisoning a generation for profit.
Is there a credible criminal complaint against the Sacklers? Not “we don’t like them” allegations, but specific and credible allegations of criminality?
The Sacklers got incredibly rich by taking tons of money out of Pursue Pharmaceutical while it was engaged in what it has admitted were criminal acts which resulted in the deaths of at least thousands. Many people view that as profiting from crime and what is worse causing widespread undeniable harm among the users of their products.
One could consider this as just very smart business though if you do not care about the people harmed. They ran a company that did bad things that allowed them to get rich but they were smart enough to keep enough distance from the bad things to ensure they themselves had deniability.
I think it boils down to whether laundering money should be legal. As far as I know, it is, in this sense.
- Everybody acknowledges Purdue Pharma broke the law and acted unethically.
- Everyone acknowledges Purdue Pharma made a lot of money directly from doing the above.
- Everyone acknowledges the Sackler family took a lot of money out of Purdue Pharma, including after they specifically knew Purdue Pharma was likely to pay judgements for the above.
- What's unclear is how we should treat the Sackler money as a result of all of this.
Bankruptcy law, as I understand it, limits itself to the possibly-enforceable and attempts to generate the best outcome for creditors.
Which by definition involves negotiation between profiteering owners (who want to give up as little of their ill-gotten money as possible) and creditors (who want as much money as possible).
And since, at the end of the day, owners can always hide money overseas or in trusts... creditors have an incentive to settle for less-than-everything.
So this is less about criminal culpability and more about negotiation.
Hasn't this area of law been pretty much static for 100+ years?
Surely this exact case has happened before? It's gotta be pretty common for a company to be wildly profitable for a while, then suddenly bankrupt, and some owners have extracted all the profits in the meantime.
No idea if they're completely unique but the legal circumstances here appear to me to be at least unusual so this certainly isnt a common company bankruptcy story: shareholders agreed to pay money into the bankruptcy estate of the companies in return for a release of related, but separate, litigation claims from third parties against them.
From my reading, trading money into a bankruptcy pot in exchange for personal liability protection didn't seem that unusual and is apparently commonplace nowadays.
Whether it should be or not... probably not. But then we'd need much tougher laws to compel compliance with personal judgements as a consequence of bankruptcy proceedings (e.g. revoking citizenship, foreign country cooperation, etc).
If we removed the possibility for liability protection as part of a deal, shareholders would have less incentive to cooperate financially, and so there'd need to be a bigger enforcement stick to balance the equation.
I guess there's a spectrum - at one end are consensual settlements, in the middle somewhere are non-consensual settlements of claims where party A is suing party B because party B did something to reduce the value of party A's claim in the bankruptcy estate, and at the most controversial end (like this case) are non-consensual settlements of cases where party A sues both the bankrupt company and party B over something they both did.
The fact that this got overturned on initial appeal and then the original agreement reinstated on further appeal does suggest that it's at least legally controversial.
The arguments made by the court seem reasonable enough (that this may be the best chance for those suing the Sacklers to get any money out of them given the jurisdiction and counterclaim issues, and that the litigation would likely be expensive and time-consuming if it were to proceed) but I suppose it will strike many as odd that a bankruptcy court gets to make that judgment (and without actually hearing the cases themselves).
I think the difference here is that it was a family company (providing a "singular" benefiting target to vilify and pursue) and the number of aggrieved parties.
If it were instead 1,000 different shareholders and corporate officers, I think the public would have lost interest.
I think this is downplaying the effect of the devastation their actions have caused. Pretty much everyone knows someone impacted by their products. As the degrees of separation increases, so does the number of people brought into the world of addiction. personally, i know many people that have opiate addictions, and not one of them was introduced to them from buying them on the street or were addicts of anything prior.
I'm just disappointed by how fixated the media gets when there's a person or family involved (e.g. Martin Shkreli, Elizabeth Holmes) but how hard it is to keep public attention absent that (e.g. insulin prices).
Opinions vary widely. There are credible criminal claims for stuff like "conspiracy to influence the FDA to ignore contrary evidence" that you could call either criminal or standard business practice depending on how on-fire your hair is.
There are very real costs to the national economy that result from killing, harming, or incapacitating millions of otherwise-capable working-age folks by knowingly getting them addicted to opioids and building the business infrastructure to expand that influence as wide as possible. Surely there is a law that can be interpreted to compensate for the effects that this campaign has wrought on society.
> There are very real costs to the national economy that result from killing, harming, or incapacitating millions of otherwise-capable working-age folks
and then there's the killing, harming, or incapacitating millions of folks, on top of that!
Yes I was only appealing to the legalistic interpretation. The larger story is that such evil is banal-ified when we stick to arguing only for legal interpretations of their choices and actions.
Eichmann in Jerusalem helps cast light on what people mean when they talk about things like systemic harms.
Mis-labeling of a drug and withholding relevant information about an approved drug from the FDA (I think it is called 'surveillance') would be two things to examine I would think...
No, you're down voted for posting with an anonymous account, preemptively complaining about being down voted, and not adding anything interesting to the discussion.
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The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals finds that the Bankruptcy Code, as currently written, allows for this action.
That the Sackler family is a bunch of profiteering, morally-bankrupt assholes is immaterial.
If we feel this is an unjust outcome, change starts with Congress passing laws that alter the Bankruptcy Code.