Category: Evil

He Has to Be the Most Evil Ratf%$# in Business Today

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Remember Martin Shkreli?

He’s the contemptible greedhead who raised the price of Daraprim by 5500% when he got the rights to it.

After a storm of public outrage, he agreed to roll back the price to an unspecified degree.

Guess which drug has not come down a penny in price:

It’s been two weeks since Turing CEO Martin Shkreli announced he would scale back the price of his drug, and so far nothing has really changed.

The biotech leader came under fire last month for his 5,000% price hike of Daraprim, a drug that fights parasitic infections.

The drug, which rose from $13.50 to $750 seemingly overnight, left the biotech and pharmaceutical industries reeling, with corporations such as Valeant facing a lot of criticism for their similar price-hike moves.

In September, he told ABC News, “We’ve agreed to lower the price of Daraprim to a point that is more affordable and is able to allow the company to make a profit, but a very small profit.”

That hasn’t happened yet. A 30-day, 30-pill supply of Daraprim would cost me $27,006 at my local pharmacy.

That boils down to about $900 a pill, which includes the wholesale cost, along with specific pharmacy fees based on the zip code I gave the pharmacy.

So while the price of the drug hasn’t gotten any higher since Shkreli hiked it 5,000%, it hasn’t gotten any lower since he promised to reduce it either. Turing did not respond to Business Insider’s request for clarification about this price.

(emphasis original)

This ain’t business, this is terrorism.

Perhaps the President should consider a drone strike.

Bobby Jindal: That guy’s brain is a bag full of cats. You can smell crazy on him.

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It does seem to be the day for rmorally bankrupt and batsh%$ insane tripe to pour our of the mouth of Republican candidates today.

In this case, the always reprehensible Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, who takes victim blaming to grieving parent who has tried to make sense of the evil that his child committed:

If, after last week’s shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, you held the gunman responsible, Bobby Jindal thinks you’ve missed the mark.

On Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Jindal published a self-described “sermon” on his campaign website, addressing what he believes are the root causes of mass shootings. These causes include, but are not limited to, “cultural decay,” violent video games, absent fathers, and the general devaluing of human life.

“It’s the old computer axiom—garbage in, garbage out,” Jindal wrote. “We fill our culture with garbage, and we reap the result.”

Jindal also lashed out at the shooter’s father, who has called for gun control in the wake of his son’s rampage. “He’s a complete failure as a father, he should be embarrassed to even show his face in public,” Jindal wrote. “He’s the problem here.

This is remarkably awful, even to the degree that ammosexuals blame the victims (as in the Newtown Massacre), this is repulsive, evil, and delusional to a degree that puts the rest of the Republican Presidential field to shame.

Seriously?!?!?! “Go to the Next One” Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

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Presidential Candidate, Neurosurgeon, and poster child for the batsh%$ insane Ben Carson has eschewed visiting the victims and the families of the victims of the Umpqua Community College shooting.

He basically said that he was too busy running for President.

I can understand how he’s being honest, but then he says that he, “Would Go to the Next One.”

So he’s maintaining that there is no problem with easy access to firearms, and that his way of dealing with the (literally) daily mass shooting is that he, “Would go to the next one.”

Un-dirtyword-believable.

Then Fox’s Brian Kilmeade asked if, like Obama, Carson would would still travel to visit victims’ families despite some residents protests of grandstanding, to which Carson replied all too casually:

Probably not. I mean, I would probably have so many things on my agenda that I would go to the next one.

So Carson doesn’t have faith in any sort of regulation to stop the massacres that that have become all too routine in this country, nor does he apparently believe that anything can stop them ever.

Did this guy somehow acquire Mad Cow Disease?

The USAF Supports Witch Burning

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I’m beginning to think that sees itself as a branch of Oral Roberts University.

In the latest episode of stupidity in the service, or at least the latest episode that doesn’t involve the over priced and under performing F-35, the Air Force has fired a dental technician for being a witch.

In an even bigger f%$# up, the person that they fired was a Hindu, the 3rd largest religion on the face of the earth:

Deborah Schoenfeld says she was harassed at a Fort Meade, Md., dental clinic for her Hindu faith and then fired when she complained about it.

 The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is representing a former Air Force contractor who says she was fired from a dental clinic at Fort Meade, Maryland, after complaining that her co-workers discriminated against her because she was Hindu. She claims they then accused her of being a witch.

 Group founder and president Mikey Weinstein wrote in a letter to officials: “We have spoken with witnesses at the clinic under your command who have universally confirmed that, not only did this horrid harassment take place, but ever since the execution of her punishment for failing the religious test imposed by the leadership of Epes Dental Clinic, a particular offending party has effusively celebrated her replacement by a Catholic woman by saying publicly that ‘It’s good to see we got an angel, since last time we had the devil.’”

 ………

 Reached by Air Force Times, Deborah Schoenfeld said that her co-workers at the Epes Dental Clinic harassed her over her Hindu faith, claiming she was satanic for wanting to practice yoga and meditating.

 Speaking on condition of anonymity, two of her former co-workers confirmed Schoenfeld’s account to Air Force Times and said that other employees at the dental clinic are devoutly Christian and deeply suspicious of Hinduism. One of them confirmed that she was referred to as a “Hindu witch.”

 One co-worker, who Schoenfeld said prayed for her to find Jesus, told her that meditation summons demons, adding that “all the soldiers who are doing meditation and yoga to help their PTSD, they are getting infected also,” Schoenfeld said.

When her requests for help through the chain of command went nowhere, she filed a formal complaint on Sept. 2, Schoenfeld said. That day, she was fired for allegedly using profanity against a co-worker, although she was not allowed to know who had accused her of doing so, she said.

This is something that is counter to the discipline and good order of the military, and yet it continues.

The  USAF in particular has problems with this, which is unsurprising, since their academy is a neighbor of the Talibaptist organization “Focus on the Family” in Colorado Springs.

You Arrogant Ass! You Killed Us!

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Somehow or other, they got an agreement on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), so they win, and the rest of us lose:

The United States and 11 other Pacific Rim countries have agreed to wide-ranging trade pact that would eliminate duties on countless goods and establish uniform rules on intellectual property, labor rights and the environment.

The seven-year effort by the U.S., concluded Monday, was aimed at embedding an American-led vision of an economic and political order in Asia. If approved by Congress, the accord would be the biggest regional trade pact ever reached and one that the U.S. hopes will be a model for future agreements.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, trade deal is expected to help a few U.S. industries while hurting a handful of others. In general, the deal will benefit larger companies in several industries such as pharmaceuticals, entertainment and other services where the U.S. is a global leader. Businesses such as mom-and-pop car-part dealers and apparel makers will probably face more competition from foreign-made goods.

Basically, small businesses get the shaft, as do workers, union rights, environmental and safety protections.

This is a bad deal, and a bankrupt philosophy, and Obama pushed it because he wanted to check another box on his legacy ticket.

I will be calling my Representative and my Senators, and telling him that if they vote for the TPP, I will vote against them in the primary, and in the general.

I’m not just talking about a symbolic vote. I’ll vote for whoever is most likely to defeat them, even if this is a Republican.*

My Hope is that there are enough Republicans who will let their hysterical hatred of Obama to vote this down, even though their corporate masters want this.

*I just threw up in my mouth.

Google Drops, “Don’t Be Evil”

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Google has reorganized itself under a holding company called “Alphabet”, and this new holding company makes no reference whatsoever to its former slogan:

Google is now Alphabet. Temporary Holding Company Number Two is now Google. And “don’t be evil” is now one step closer to being a thing of the past.

Following the corporate reshuffle at Google, the world’s largest search firm is now owned by a holding company called “Alphabet” – which, confusingly, was temporarily a subsidiary of Google but then executed a “reverse takeover” of its parent company to become the new boss, at which point Google spun off a number of its own subsidiaries such as its life sciences subsidiary Calico and “moonshot” division X to sit under Alphabet.

The end result is that the Google we all know and love still exists, but sits under an entirely new company, with a new name, new brand, new website – and new ethics policy.

When Alphabet was revealed, it was made clear that Google’s pre-existing ethics policy would only apply to the search firm itself, rather than its parent company. But now that Alphabet has revealed its own Code of Conduct, and the words “don’t be evil” are nowhere in sight.

It was only a matter of time, I guess.

The interesting thing here is whether Google’s eschewing its prior values will have the effect of making recruiting more difficult.

After all, before Carly Fiorina destroyed “The HP Way”, people were willing to take a pay cut to work at the firm.

Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead

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Barack Obama’s educational privatizer in chief, Arne Duncan, has announced that he is stepping down at the end of the year:

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan plans to step down from his Cabinet position by the end of the year, leaving the Obama administration more than a year before the president’s term will end.

 “He’s done more to bring our educational system, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the 21st century than anyone else,” President Obama said as he announced Duncan’s resignation at the White House on Friday afternoon. “America will be better off for what he has done.”

OK, as is made clear by Obama’s statements, the Cossacks work for the Czar.

As anti-public education and anti-teacher as he has been, it is clear that he has been executing a pro-Wall Street, anti-Teacher, and anti-Student* agenda at Obama’s behest.

Still, I am sure that he will get a 7 figure jackpot at the end of the rainbow.

*As I have asked many times, “Is there anything that big finance can’t make destructive and evil?”†
†If the goal is to involve Wall Street in a public service, the effect will harm that service. QED.

Is this Even News?

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I have to use this cartoon Way too often

Another day, another mass shooting in America:

A rural community college became the site of America’s latest mass shooting on Thursday as a lone gunman burst into classrooms during the school day and mowed down terrified students before being shot dead in a firefight with police, authorities said.

Officials said nine people were killed, plus the gunman, and seven injured during the traumatic events at Umpqua Community College, about three hours south of Portland.

A U.S. law enforcement official identified the gunman as 26-year-old Chris Harper Mercer of Winchester, Ore. He was described as wearing a dark shirt and jeans while spewing bullets from what appeared to be three pistols and possibly a semiautomatic rifle.

Let’s be clear here: This is no longer news.

We have a shooting like this, albeit typically on a slightly smaller scale, on an almost daily basis in this nation.

TransCanada Loses Again

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They just gave up on a lawsuit in Nebraska over their attempt to assert extraordinary eminent domain rights:

TransCanada announced on Tuesday that the company will pull out of the lawsuit filed by over 100 Nebraska landowners challenging their right to use eminent domain to seize land for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Facing mounting legal expenses and a likely loss in court, the company will instead go through the Public Service Commission (PSC) review process it had originally hoped to avoid.

“We believe that going through the PSC process is the clearest path to achieving route certainty for the Keystone XL Project in Nebraska. It ultimately saves time, reduces conflict with those who oppose the project and sets clear rules for approval of the route,” said a representative of the company in a statement.

The PSC process will take at least a year, and cannot move forward if and when President Obama rejects the federal permit for the pipeline.

………

“TransCanada realizes that LB 1161 is unconstitutional,” added Art Tanderup, a farmer whose land is on the proposed pipeline route. “This is a victory for landowners standing up to prevent a foreign corporation from taking their land for corporate greed through eminent domain. TransCanada pushed LB1161 through the legislature to avoid using the Public Service Commission procedure that they now want to follow. We believe that the PSC will not allow Keystone XL to be placed in the Sand Hills or over the Ogallala Aquifer but are confident President Obama will reject the pipeline before the PSC even has a chance to conduct a review.”

So, TransCanada, the company that ignores regulations, and leans on lawmakers to exempt them from regulations, and then has their pipelines blow up, has decided that their latest attempt to subvert the regulatory prices isn’t going to work.

They lose, and the rest of us win.

I can live with that.

Stop Whining, Bitches

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I am referring, of course to House of Saud:

Saudi Arabia has called on Bashar al-Assad to give up power or be removed by force, raising the global stakes at a time when the Russians are shipping troops and military hardware to Syria in an effort to prop up its beleaguered leader.

The threat was made on Tuesday by Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Adel Al-Jubeir.

“There is no future for Assad in Syria,” Jubeir told journalists at the UN general assembly. “There are two options for a settlement in Syria. One option is a political process where there would be a transitional council. The other option is a military option, which also would end with the removal of Bashar al-Assad from power.”

“This could be a more lengthy process and a more destructive process but the choice is entirely that of Bashar al-Assad.” The foreign minister did not specify how Assad would be forcibly removed, but pointed out that Saudi Arabia is already backing “moderate rebels” in the civil war.

The Saudi intervention fuelled an already heated row at the UN over Syria’s future, where the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, issued a forthright defence of the Syrian regime, describing it as fighting a lonely and “valiant” battle against Islamic State extremists.

You know, I know that you have all kinds of butthurt over the fact that the secular* Arab government in Damascus is still standing, even after they created ISIS to attempt to create another Sunni dominated sectarian state.

You are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.

The fact that you are unable to accomplish your agenda in that part of the world is a good thing.

*And murderous. The regime is murderous too, but the House of Saud has no problem with murderously genocidal regimes, see Bahrain as an example.

iPhone Users Just Love Their Walled Garden

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Even if it means that Apple is censoring what news they can read:

Metadata+, a free app that catalogues fatal drone strikes by the United States, was pulled from the App Store this morning. Users were alerted via a notification that said the app was removed because of “exceptionally crude or objectionable content.”

Metadata+ was developed by The Intercept’s research editor Josh Begley. The app listed the date and location of drone strikes, as well as the victims, and sent notifications to users when a new strike occurred.

Begley struggled to get the App Store to accept his work—Mashable reports that Metadata+ was approved this February after five rejections. The sensitive topic of U.S. drone strikes seems to have been a problem for Apple: Begley was rejected last August because his app might be “objectionable” for many audiences.

………

Begley told Mashable that an Apple Review Team employee contacted him after several rejections and told him that if the app focused specifically on U.S. drone strikes, “it’s not going to be approved.”

So, it appears that not cheerleading for US drone strikes is unacceptable content for Apple, Inc.

What happens when the FBI comes and asks for a backdoor into your private communications?

At least Android is open source, so if there is a backdoor, someone can compile a version without some back door that has elements of the US state security apparatus leering looking at your private communications.

No wonder Apple is lobbying so hard for a bill in congress that grants them immunity for sharing data.

If You Treat Your Employees Like Crap, It Flows to the Customer

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It turns out that the Wal-Mart grocery business is lagging, because they suck at running supermarkets:

Wal-Mart’s grocery business is getting crushed by competitors, according to analysts.

The retailer is plagued by negative customer feedback “due to lack of convenience in shopping Supercenter formats, below-average customer service, and below-average quality, freshness, and breadth of produce,” Wayne Hood, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, wrote in a recent research note.

As a result, Wal-Mart is losing grocery market share to rivals like Kroger and Publix, which have higher customer satisfaction ratings than Wal-Mart, according to Hood.

That’s a troubling sign for Wal-Mart, which gets more than half of its revenue from groceries, and has been consistently offering lower prices than its rivals, Hood writes.

Grocery prices at Wal-Mart are approximately 10% to 15% lower at Wal-Mart compared to Kroger, according to Hood.

But the lower prices have failed to spur growth in Wal-Mart’s grocery business, as illustrated in the graph below.

Basically, Wal-Mart sucks, but they are cheap.

Of course, dollar stores are cheaper and they are not suckier, and Target is a bit more expensive and much less sucky, and now it turns out that even the lowly supermarket chain produces stores that people are wiling to pay extra to go to.

Couldn’t happen to a more repulsive company.

The Flies Return to the Sh%$

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By which I mean that homophobic bigot Kim Davis is officially changing her party affiliation to Republican.  Good riddance:

A county clerk in Kentucky who was briefly jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples said on Friday that she and her family have switched to the Republican Party because the Democrats no longer represented them.

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, 50, who has said her beliefs as an Apostolic Christian prevent her from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, said they had changed parties last week. She was a long-time Democrat in eastern Kentucky.

“My husband and I had talked about it for quite a while and we came to the conclusion that the Democratic Party left us a long time ago, so why were we hanging on?” she told Reuters in an interview at a hotel in Washington, where she has traveled to be feted at a Family Research Council event later on Friday.

Not a surprise, really.

Since she is now making bank on being a bigot, she has to get that official American bigot membership card.

Do You Know What Drug in Your Medicine Cabinet is Most Likely to Kill You?

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If you answered Acetaminophen (Tylenol) you would be right.

An overdose of the drug can destroy your liver, and for some people, toxic effects can be as little as twice the therapeutic dose.

Well, the FDA is looking at tightening up regulations on the drug, and the maker of Tylenol ramped up a lobbying campaign to prevent the FDA protecting the public:

Recently filed court documents show the makers of Tylenol planned to enlist the White House and lawmakers to block the Food and Drug Administration from imposing tough new safety restrictions on acetaminophen, the iconic painkiller’s chief ingredient.

 An executive with McNeil Consumer Healthcare – which counts Tylenol as its flagship product – told the board of directors for parent company Johnson and Johnson about a campaign to “influence the FDA” and block recommendations made by an agency advisory panel in 2009.

 About 150 Americans a year die by accidentally taking too much acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. The toll does not have to be so high. Read the story.

 After Dr. Janet Woodcock, the FDA’s top drug regulator, put off meeting with McNeil executives, the company’s president, Peter Luther, sent out an August 2009 email.

 “We’re being too nice and too worried about stepping on FDA’s toes. It may be time to let members of Congress to put some pressure on FDA,” Luther wrote to other top executives. ”We have to make this our top priority and pull out all stops.”

 Acetaminophen is considered safe when taken as directed. But in higher doses, the drug can cause liver damage and death. Studies show the drug is the leading cause of acute liver failure in the U.S., with fatalities increasing seven-fold in the decade between 1995 and 2005 to more than 200 a year.

 ………

 The previously unreported lobbying campaign was disclosed as part of a trial scheduled to start today in Atlantic City that promises to draw new scrutiny to McNeil’s efforts to protect its painkiller from additional regulation and disclosures about the full extent of its risks.

 The case pits McNeil against Regina Jackson, a New Jersey state employee who claims she was hospitalized with elevated liver enzymes after inadvertently exceeding the daily recommended dose for Extra Strength Tylenol for a couple of days.

 The Atlantic City case is being watched closely as it is the first to come to trial of more than two hundred lawsuits currently pending in state and federal courts that allege McNeil knew its drug was potentially dangerous while promoting its safety.

 As detailed in a 2013 investigation by ProPublica and This American Life, McNeil has opposed warning labels, dosage restrictions and even public awareness campaigns over concerns of profitability.

 At the same time, the investigation found that the FDA has delayed implementing suggestions to improve the safety of acetaminophen, taken by tens of millions of Americans every week. Though hearings began more than 38 years ago, the agency has yet to finalize regulations for the safe use of the drug.

 ………

 The proposed lobbying campaign arose in response to a June 2009 meeting of more than three dozen scientists, researchers and pharmacists convened by the FDA to review the safety of acetaminophen.

 The panel of independent experts endorsed a sweeping set of reforms. They recommended that the FDA reduce the total daily dose of acetaminophen, and make extra-strength pills available only by prescription.

 McNeil officials viewed the recommendations as a threat to sales of Extra Strength Tylenol, according to R. Clay Milling, one of the plaintiff’s attorneys. McNeil makes about $400 million in revenue from its extra-strength line, compared with only about $14 million from regular strength Tylenol, Milling told the court, according to a transcript.

 Milling, who reviewed internal McNeil documents as part of the lawsuit, told the court that a senior McNeil executive made a presentation to the Johnson and Johnson board about a plan that included contacting the White House, the Office of Management and Budget and lawmakers.

 ………

 The current recommended daily dose for the drug is four grams per day — the equivalent of eight extra strength pills. But occasional reports in scientific literature have documented liver damage occurring after taking as little as two extra pills per day for several days.

 The agency has worried about the prevalence of acetaminophen on the market — McNeil and its generic competitors have developed hundreds of over-the-counter products that contain the drug, increasing the risk that a consumer could inadvertently ingest dangerous levels.

 The most recent FDA data show that acetaminophen remains, by far, the leading cause of acute liver failure in the United States, with the number of cases increasing.

(emphasis mine)

Pharma greed is not just some asshole hedge fund puke raising prices.

It’s also stuff like this, where companies like Johnson & Johnson call in chips to bought and paid for politicians so that they can keep killing people.

In fact, I think that the guys at J&J are worse.  Unlike Martin Shkreli they knew that they were lobbying for the opportunity to profit off of killing hundreds of people a year.

What Happens When This Doesn’t Generate a Media Sh%$ Storm?

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Martin Shkreli, the hedge fund pharma executive who generated outrage when he bought a drug for rare diseases and boosted its price by over 5555%, has backed down after he got called out by the New York Times:

“Yes it is absolutely a reaction — there were mistakes made with respect to helping people understand why we took this action, I think that it makes sense to lower the price in response to the anger that was felt by people,” Shkreli, 32, said.

Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York bought the drug from Impax Laboratories in August for $55 million and raised the price. Shkreli said Tuesday the price would be lowered to allow the company to break even or make a smaller profit.

Daraprim fights toxoplasmosis. The infection is particularly dangerous for people who have weakened immune systems, like AIDS patients, as well as for pregnant women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

………

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was among those who expressed outrage over the price increase. On Tuesday she outlined a plan she said would limit how much patients have to pay out of pocket for medications each month.

As I noted last night, after Glaxo Smith Kline sold the drug market rights and before Shkreli bought the drug, the price was raised by 1350%, from $1.00 to $13.50 a pill, but since it wasn’t going from $13.50 to $750.00 a pill, nobody batted an eyelash.

Notwithstanding the protestations of contemptible greedheads like Martin Shkreli, generating unearned profits through financial engineering and exploitation of monopoly power benefits no one but contemptible greedheads like Martin Shkreli.

This Is a Clear Case of Immoral Parasitism, and It’s Pharma, so Not the Surprise

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You know the story, hedge fund puke buys a pharmaceutical firm, takes an out of patent drug that costs a few bucks, changes the distribution method to make analysis by potential competitors more difficult, and then raise the price by 5555%: (No, this is not a decimal place error)

Specialists in infectious disease are protesting a gigantic overnight increase in the price of a 62-year-old drug that is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection.

 The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, a start-up run by a former hedge fund manager. Turing immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

 “What is it that they are doing differently that has led to this dramatic increase?” said Dr. Judith Aberg, the chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She said the price increase could force hospitals to use “alternative therapies that may not have the same efficacy.”

 ………

 The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing earlier this month calling the price increase for Daraprim “unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population” and “unsustainable for the health care system.” An organization representing the directors of state AIDS programs has also been looking into the price increase, according to doctors and patient advocates.

 Daraprim, known generically as pyrimethamine, is used mainly to treat toxoplasmosis, a parasite infection that can cause serious or even life-threatening problems for babies born to women who become infected during pregnancy, and also for people with compromised immune systems, like AIDS patients and certain cancer patients.

 ………

 This is not the first time the 32-year-old Mr. Shkreli, who has a reputation for both brilliance and brashness, has been the center of controversy. He started MSMB Capital, a hedge fund company, in his 20s and drew attention for urging the Food and Drug Administration not to approve certain drugs made by companies whose stock he was shorting.

 In 2011, Mr. Shkreli started Retrophin, which also acquired old neglected drugs and sharply raised their prices. Retrophin’s board fired Mr. Shkreli a year ago. Last month, it filed a complaint in Federal District Court in Manhattan, accusing him of using Retrophin as a personal piggy bank to pay back angry investors in his hedge fund.

 ………

 With the price now high, other companies could conceivably make generic copies, since patents have long expired. One factor that could discourage that option is that Daraprim’s distribution is now tightly controlled, making it harder for generic companies to get the samples they need for the required testing.

 The switch from drugstores to controlled distribution was made in June by Impax, not by Turing. Still, controlled distribution was a strategy Mr. Shkreli talked about at his previous company as a way to thwart generics.

 ………

 Dr. Aberg of Mount Sinai said some hospitals will now find Daraprim too expensive to keep in stock, possibly resulting in treatment delays. She said that Mount Sinai was continuing to use the drug, but each use now required a special review.

 “This seems to be all profit-driven for somebody,” Dr. Aberg said, “and I just think it’s a very dangerous process.”

You can read the details of his looting the last firm he ran here.

I would note that Mr Shkreli is not alone in this behavior: When Glaxo Smith Kline sold the marketing rights to the drug to CorePharma, the price of the drug was $1 a pill,

Is there anything that big finance can’t make destructive and evil?

28 Years

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Former president of Peanut Corporation of America, Stewart Parnell, was sentenced to 28 years in prison for knowing shipping salmonella contaminated peanuts around the country:

Former peanut company executive Stewart Parnell was hit with a virtual life prison term Monday for his 2014 conviction on crimes related to a salmonella outbreak blamed for killing nine and sickening hundreds.

A federal judge in Georgia sentenced the 61-year-old former head of Peanut Corporation of America to 28 years behind bars, imposing potentially the toughest punishment in U.S. history for a producer in a food-borne illness case.

U.S. District Judge W. Louis Sands also sentenced the former executive’s brother, Michael Parnell, 56, to serve a 20-year prison term. The relative and co-defendant was a broker who provided food manufacturing giant Kellogg’s with peanut paste from his brother’s company.

Mary Wilkerson, 41, a former quality control manager at the now-defunct peanut firm, drew a five-year prison term for her conviction on obstruction in the tragedy.

Sands also ordered both Parnells to surrender, rejecting defense arguments that the two should be allowed to remain free on bond pending appeals. The judge deemed them potential flight risks.

………

The case stemmed from Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention findings that traced a national salmonella outbreak to the Parnell company’s peanut roasting plant in Blakely, Ga. The outbreak sickened 714 people in 46 states and may have contributed to nine deaths, the CDC reported.

The illnesses began in January 2009 and ultimately prompted one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history.

A federal jury convicted Parnell last September on 71 criminal counts, including conspiracy, obstruction of justice and introduction of adulterated food. The verdict came after prosecutors presented evidence that Parnell and the co-defendants knowingly shipped salmonella-tainted peanut butter from the Georgia facility to Kellogg’s and other customers — who in turn used it in products ranging from packaged crackers to pet food.

How about some similar sentences for corrupt bankers?

The Good Guy’s Win

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A few days ago, I noted how law enforcement came down on a New Hampshire library for operating a TOR node.

Today, we earn that the West Lebanon library told the US state security apparatus to go pound sand:

The Kilton Public Library in West Lebanon will reactivate its piece of the anonymous internet browsing network Tor, despite law enforcement’s concerns that the network might be used for criminal activities.

The Lebanon Library Board of Trustees let stand its unanimous June decision to devote some of the library’s excess bandwidth to a node, or “relay,” for Tor, after a full room of about 50 residents and other interested members of the public expressed their support for Lebanon’s participation in the system at a meeting Tuesday night.

“With any freedom there is risk,” library board Chairman Francis Oscadal said. “It came to me that I could vote in favor of the good . . . or I could vote against the bad.

“I’d rather vote for the good because there is value to this.”

I haz a happy.

Quote of the Day

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“I’d rather go to Iraq than work for Carly Fiorina again,” said one high-level former campaign staffer, who asked not to be identified, citing disclosure restrictions in his contract.

Carly Fiorina, who’s net worth is something north of $50 million, stiffed her campaign workers in her 2010 Senate (Demon Sheep) campaign.

BTW, not getting paid by a political candidate is something that happens now and again, the amount of outright hatred expressed rivals that of long time Hewlett Packard employees.

It’s not about getting stiffed. She must have been absolute hell to work for.

Think about this: Donald f%$#ing Trump doesn’t have employees ratting him out like this, and neither does Hillary Clinton, and if any of her former employees were willing to right a tell all, they would get a seven figure advance. (Even more if they were willing to mention “Benghazi.” )

 It really is remarkable how people like her (I mean high powered executives, not Republicans in this case) keep failing up the business food chain.

H/t Digby at Salon for the quote.