Capitalism at its finest

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  • PJ_SoulPJ_Soul Vancouver, BC Posts: 49,473
    PJ_Soul said:
    PJ_Soul said:
    Re the Wu Tang Clan album.... Fuck Wu Tang Clan man. They are massive assholes for pulling that stunt in the first place, and for allowing it to be sold to one of the worst human beings in the world. I'd be perfectly happy if Shkreli destroyed that damn thing like he bizarrely threatens to in the description on his eBay sale.
    but didn't they sell it before they knew it was him? it is bizarre, especially since no one will be able to hear it until 2103! LOL. who cares. if it was a PJ album, I'd be furious. But it's rap. so I give zero fucks. 
    They could have prevented him from buying it by not doing such a stupid thing. They're idiots for not making sure they knew who was buying it and bigger idiots for the actual idea.
    yeah, I really don't see the purpose of it at all. I mean, before I had heard who bought it, I had no idea about it at all. So if it was for publicity, it failed miserably. 
    I heard all about it before Shkreli bought it... My perception was that it was widely reported on and did indeed bring publicity even before Shkreli paid for it.... But obviously the person who purchased it put the publicity it brought into a zone the Wu Tang Clan probably never imagined... or wanted, since really it's becoming more negative publicity than positive.
    With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata
  • mickeyratmickeyrat up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,408
    PJ_Soul said:
    PJ_Soul said:
    Re the Wu Tang Clan album.... Fuck Wu Tang Clan man. They are massive assholes for pulling that stunt in the first place, and for allowing it to be sold to one of the worst human beings in the world. I'd be perfectly happy if Shkreli destroyed that damn thing like he bizarrely threatens to in the description on his eBay sale.
    but didn't they sell it before they knew it was him? it is bizarre, especially since no one will be able to hear it until 2103! LOL. who cares. if it was a PJ album, I'd be furious. But it's rap. so I give zero fucks. 
    They could have prevented him from buying it by not doing such a stupid thing. They're idiots for not making sure they knew who was buying it and bigger idiots for the actual idea.
    yeah, I really don't see the purpose of it at all. I mean, before I had heard who bought it, I had no idea about it at all. So if it was for publicity, it failed miserably. 


    really? its mentioned often in relation to fuckwit here and you guys are talking about them.
    _____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________

    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
  • HughFreakingDillonHughFreakingDillon Winnipeg Posts: 35,808
    mickeyrat said:
    PJ_Soul said:
    PJ_Soul said:
    Re the Wu Tang Clan album.... Fuck Wu Tang Clan man. They are massive assholes for pulling that stunt in the first place, and for allowing it to be sold to one of the worst human beings in the world. I'd be perfectly happy if Shkreli destroyed that damn thing like he bizarrely threatens to in the description on his eBay sale.
    but didn't they sell it before they knew it was him? it is bizarre, especially since no one will be able to hear it until 2103! LOL. who cares. if it was a PJ album, I'd be furious. But it's rap. so I give zero fucks. 
    They could have prevented him from buying it by not doing such a stupid thing. They're idiots for not making sure they knew who was buying it and bigger idiots for the actual idea.
    yeah, I really don't see the purpose of it at all. I mean, before I had heard who bought it, I had no idea about it at all. So if it was for publicity, it failed miserably. 


    really? its mentioned often in relation to fuckwit here and you guys are talking about them.
    as I said, before Shkreli bought it, I didn't know about it. But I also don't follow rap news. 
    Darwinspeed, all. 

    Cheers,

    HFD




  • rgambsrgambs Posts: 13,576
    Hahaha Shkreli is a class act just like Drumpf!
    Typical Trumpet, so concerned with opposing liberalism that they can't manage normal brain function.
    Monkey Driven, Call this Living?
  • mickeyratmickeyrat up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,408
      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-shkreli-greebel/ex-lawyer-for-pharma-executive-shkreli-convicted-of-aiding-fraud-scheme-idUSKBN1EL1KP?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5a4455fe04d3017b1015e08d&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook

    Ex-lawyer for pharma executive Shkreli convicted of aiding fraud scheme
    Jan Wolfe, Nate Raymond

    (Reuters) - A New York lawyer who once advised Martin Shkreli was convicted on Wednesday of helping him defraud a pharmaceutical company, a charge a different jury cleared the drug executive of when it found him guilty of securities fraud earlier this year.


    Evan Greebel, who was outside counsel to Shkreli’s former company Retrophin Inc (RTRX.O), was found guilty by a federal jury in Brooklyn of charges he conspired to commit wire fraud and securities fraud, prosecutors said.



    “We are shocked by the verdict,” said Reed Brodsky, a lawyer for Greebel. “We will continue to fight for justice for Evan Greebel and his family.”

    Acting U.S. Attorney Bridget Rohde in Brooklyn said the verdict sent a message to lawyers that they will be held accountable when they “use their legal expertise to facilitate the commission of crime.”

    The verdict came after a different jury in August found Shkreli guilty of defrauding hedge fund investors, but not guilty of conspiring with Greebel to steal from Retrophin. He has denied wrongdoing.

    Greebel, 44, was a partner at the law firm Katten Muchin Rosenman when he was working for Retrophin. He later joined the firm Kaye Scholer, but resigned after his arrest in December 2015.

    Shkreli, 34, became notorious in 2015 when he raised the price of anti-parasitic drug Daraprim to $750 a pill, from $13.50, as chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals. The price hike is unrelated to the criminal case.

    The charges he and Greebel faced related to Shkreli’s management of his previous drug company, Retrophin, and of two hedge funds, MSMB Capital and MSMB Healthcare, from 2009 to 2014.

    Prosecutors have said that Shkreli lied about the funds’ finances to lure investors and concealed devastating trading losses. They said he paid investors back with money and shares stolen from Retrophin, which he founded in 2011.


    Prosecutors said Greebel assisted Shkreli in defrauding Retrophin through a series of settlement and sham consulting agreements.

    In September, following his conviction, Shkreli was jailed after he offered a $5,000 reward in a posting on Facebook for a strand of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s hair. That prompted U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto to revoke his bail.

    Greebel denied wrongdoing, and at trial, his lawyers sought to distance their client from Shkreli, whose provocative public behavior earned him the nickname “pharma bro.”

    Brodsky told jurors during his opening statement that Shkreli lied to Greebel just as he lied to investors.

    Greebel was also accused of conspiring with Shkreli to exercise secret control over Retrophin shares belonging to several other shareholders. Shkreli was found guilty of that charge during his trial.

    Reporting by Jan Wolfe and Nate Raymond; Editing by Frances Kerry and Tom Brown
    Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
        

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    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
  • JC29856JC29856 Posts: 9,617


    Any the working stiffs still argue over and defend democrats and republicans! 
  • CM189191CM189191 Minneapolis via Chicago Posts: 6,786
    still pushing that 'both sides are bad' narrative, huh? 
    WI 6/27/98 WI 10/8/00 MO 10/11/00 IL 4/23/03 MN 6/26/06 MN 6/27/06 WI 6/30/06 IL 8/5/07 IL 8/21/08 (EV) IL 8/22/08 (EV) IL 8/23/09 IL 8/24/09 IN 5/7/10 IL 6/28/11 (EV) IL 6/29/11 (EV) WI 9/3/11 WI 9/4/11 IL 7/19/13 NE 10/09/14 IL 10/17/14 MN 10/19/14 FL 4/11/16 IL 8/20/16 IL 8/22/16 IL 08/18/18 IL 08/20/18 IT 07/05/2020 AT 07/07/2020
  • benjsbenjs Toronto, ON Posts: 8,929
    CM189191 said:
    still pushing that 'both sides are bad' narrative, huh? 
    Seems to me that Democrat politicians just put an effort to hide their lies, where Republicans do it shamelessly and blatantly.

    On the Productivity vs. Compensation topic above, it's quite disingenuous that the chart only measures non-supervisory employees and neglects the massive roles which machinery and automation have played (but, hey, that's data - if you omit variables you can make nearly any statement you want). To be honest, I'm surprised that the ratio of productivity to hourly compensation increase isn't greater.
    '05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2

    EV
    Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
  • mickeyratmickeyrat up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,408
    whats more interesting is this is really a thread about pharmadouche Shkreli.....and now his convict lawyer
    _____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________

    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
  • mickeyratmickeyrat up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,408
    edited September 2018
    well how about that.......

    A group of major American hospitals, battered by price spikes on old drugs and long-lasting shortages of critical medicines, has launched a mission-driven, not-for-profit generic drug company, Civica Rx, to take some control over the drug supply.

    Backed by seven large health systems and three philanthropic groups, the new venture will be led by an industry insider who refuses to draw a salary. The company will focus initially on establishing price transparency and stable supplies for 14 generic drugs used in hospitals, without pressure from shareholders to issue dividends or push a stock price higher.

    “We’re trying to do the right thing — create a first-of-its-kind societal asset with one mission: to make sure essential generic medicines are affordable and available to everyone,” said Dan Liljenquist, chair of Civica Rx and chief strategy officer at Intermountain Healthcare in Utah.

    The consortium, which includes health systems such as the Mayo Clinic and HCA Healthcare, collectively represents about 500 hospitals. Liljenquist said that the initial governing members have already committed $100 million to the effort. The business model will ultimately rely on the long-term contracts that member health care organizations agree to — a commitment to buy a fixed portion of their drug volume from Civica.

    While Civica did not disclose which drugs it’s focusing on for competitive reasons, Elie M. Bahou, chief pharmacy officer of Providence St. Joseph Health, a 51-hospital system spread across seven states and one of the members of the consortium, said the criteria include drugs that underwent price increases of 50 percent or more between 2014 and 2016 and essential medicines that were on national shortage lists.

    A 2016 survey commissioned by hospital lobbying groups found that a third of hospital administrators reported that higher drug prices had a “severe” effect on their ability to manage their budgets.

    Several hospital leaders said shortages and price spikes on old drugs are managed on a near-daily basis. The cost isn’t just the price of a drug, but the clinical and staff time spent tracking the supply, looking for alternatives and changing protocols. For hospital systems that are in multiple states, the shortage problems are often hyperlocal, too — in one state, morphine might be available while fentanyl is in shortage, while in another, the reverse could be true. So the one solution may not even work systemwide.

    “There’s a whiteboard at every one of our pharmacies, and there are 10 to 20 drugs on the whiteboard and a number — that’s the supply they have on hand. And depending on what that number is, they’ll strategize: What are we going to do,” said Bob Ripley, chief pharmacy officer of Trinity Health, one of the health systems in the consortium.

    Civica Rx’s first drug could hit the market next year, and the company has committed to a transparent pricing model, without secret rebates that are common throughout the pharmaceutical industry.

    Martin VanTrieste, chief executive of Civica, worked in the traditional pharmaceutical industry for decades — most recently at biotech giant Amgen — and said that he came out of retirement to take on the role with two requirements: He’d work without pay, and the company had to remain focused on patients. The question of how big the company might grow, he said, depends on how the market reacts.

    “We want the marketplace to take care of itself and work, so if the entrance of Civica with 14 drugs — and the threat we can do more, pretty quickly, makes the marketplace work better, probably we don’t grow much bigger than that,” VanTrieste said. “But if the marketplace is broken and can’t be fixed by adding just 14 drugs,” the company could expand much more.

    There are risks to the idea. Civica’s leaders have discussed the possibility that other companies that make the generic drugs will temporarily cut their prices in an effort to maintain market share. But Civica leaders say the model of guaranteeing a steady supply at a fair, transparent price will be attractive to hospitals. Since the effort was first outlined in January, health organizations that represent a third of the nation’s hospitals have expressed interest.

    “The risk of doing nothing is that we’ll continue with the same price escalations and shortages we’ve had,” said Amy Compton-Phillips, chief clinical officer of Providence St. Joseph Health. “The risk of doing nothing to me seems higher than actually trying creative solutions to solve the problem.”

    Post edited by mickeyrat on
    _____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________

    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
  • my2handsmy2hands Posts: 17,117
    Affordable and available medicine... what fucking commy thought up that bullshit? Lol
  • BentleyspopBentleyspop Craft Beer Brewery, Colorado Posts: 10,524
    my2hands said:
    Affordable and available medicine... what fucking commy thought up that bullshit? Lol
    That is some socialist bullshit
  • mickeyratmickeyrat up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,408


    Shkreli ordered to return $64M, is barred from drug industry
    By MICHAEL R. SISAK and JENNIFER PELTZ
    Today

    NEW YORK (AP) — Martin Shkreli must return $64.6 million in profits he and his former company reaped from jacking up the price and monopolizing the market for a lifesaving drug, a federal judge ruled Friday while also barring the provocative, imprisoned ex-CEO from the pharmaceutical industry for the rest of his life.

    U.S. District Judge Denise Cote's ruling came several weeks after a seven-day bench trial in December that featured recordings of conversations that Cote said showed Shkreli continuing to exert control over the company, Vyera Pharmaceuticals LLC, from behind bars and discussing ways to thwart generic versions of its lucrative drug, Daraprim.

    “Shkreli was no side player in, or a ‘remote, unrelated’ beneficiary of Vyera’s scheme," Cote wrote in a 135-page opinion. "He was the mastermind of its illegal conduct and the person principally responsible for it throughout the years."

    The Federal Trade Commission and seven states brought the case in 2020 against the man known in the media as “Pharma Bro," about two years after he was sentenced to prison in an unrelated securities fraud scheme.

    “‘Envy, greed, lust, and hate,' don’t just ‘separate,’ but they obviously motivated Mr. Shkreli and his partner to illegally jack up the price of a life-saving drug as Americans’ lives hung in the balance,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said, peppering the written statement with references to the Wu-Tang Clan, whose one-of-a-kind album Shkreli had to fork over to satisfy court debt.

    “But Americans can rest easy because Martin Shkreli is a pharma bro no more."

    Messages seeking comment were left with Shkreli's lawyers.

    Shkreli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals — later Vyera — when it raised the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after obtaining exclusive rights to the decades-old drug in 2015. It treats a rare parasitic disease that strikes pregnant women, cancer patients and AIDS patients.

    Shkreli defended the decision as capitalism at work and said insurance and other programs ensured that people who need Daraprim would ultimately get it.

    But the move sparked outrage from the medical community to Congress and was a rare source of bipartisan agreement on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, where Democrat Hillary Clinton called it price-gouging and future President Donald Trump, a Republican, called Shkreli “a spoiled brat.”

    Shkreli eventually offered hospitals half off — still amounting to a 2,500% increase. But patients normally take most of the weekslong treatment after returning home, so they and their insurers still faced the $750-a-pill price.

    Shkreli resigned as Turing’s CEO in 2015, a day after he was arrested on securities fraud charges related to two failed hedge funds he ran before getting into the pharmaceutical industry. He was convicted of lying to investors and cheating them out of millions and is serving a seven-year sentence at a federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, and is due to be released in November.

    The FTC and seven states — New York, California, Illinois, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia — alleged in their case that Vyera hiked the price of Daraprim and illegally created “a web of anticompetitive restrictions” to prevent other companies from creating cheaper generic versions. Among other things, they alleged, Vyera blocked access to a key ingredient for the medication and to data the companies would want to evaluate the drug’s market potential.


    continues....


    _____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________

    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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