[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

The opioid epidemic was deliberately manufactured, complete with public relations campaigns.

NYT: McKinsey Advised Purdue Pharma How to ‘Turbocharge’ Opioid Sales, Lawsuit Says

The world’s most prestigious management-consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, has been drawn into a national reckoning over who bears responsibility for the opioid crisis that has devastated families and communities across America.

In legal papers released in unredacted form on Thursday, the Massachusetts attorney general said McKinsey had helped the maker of OxyContin fan the flames of the opioid epidemic. McKinsey’s consultants, the attorney general revealed, had instructed the drug company, Purdue Pharma, on how to “turbocharge” sales of OxyContin, how to counter efforts by drug enforcement agents to reduce opioid use, and were part of a team that looked at how “to counter the emotional messages from mothers with teenagers that overdosed” on the drug.

The McKinsey disclosures are part of a lawsuit Massachusetts filed against Purdue Pharma, accusing the company of misleading doctors and patients about the safety of opioid use. Even when the company knew patients were addicted and dying, it still tried to boost sales of opioids, the lawsuit alleges, adding, “All the while, Purdue peddled falsehoods to keep patients away from safer alternatives.”

Purdue Pharma helped plant the seeds of the opioid epidemic through its aggressive marketing of OxyContin. More than 130 people die each day in the United States — 47,000 in 2017 — after overdosing on opioids, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the self-regulating free market!

Also, apparently every politician in Virginia wore blackface or committed sexual misconduct.

Bloomberg: Virginia Attorney General Says He Wore Blackface at College Party

Richmond, Va. (AP) -- Another top Virginia Democrat — Attorney General Mark Herring — admitted Wednesday to putting on blackface in the 1980s, when he was a college student.

Herring issued a statement saying he wore brown makeup and a wig in 1980 to look like a black rapper during a party as a 19 -year-old undergraduate at the University of Virginia.

The revelation further roils the top levels of Virginia government. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax are already facing controversies, and Herring would be next in line to be governor after those two men.

BadKen wrote:

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the self-regulating free market!

Actually government regulation was the real root of the blah dee blah dee blah.

BadKen wrote:

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the self-regulating free market!

Are there any poor libertarians?

Gremlin wrote:

Also, apparently every politician in Virginia wore blackface or committed sexual misconduct.

Bloomberg: Virginia Attorney General Says He Wore Blackface at College Party

Richmond, Va. (AP) -- Another top Virginia Democrat — Attorney General Mark Herring — admitted Wednesday to putting on blackface in the 1980s, when he was a college student.

Herring issued a statement saying he wore brown makeup and a wig in 1980 to look like a black rapper during a party as a 19 -year-old undergraduate at the University of Virginia.

The revelation further roils the top levels of Virginia government. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax are already facing controversies, and Herring would be next in line to be governor after those two men.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DyvDuudUYAU-aA7.jpg)

TheGameguru wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the self-regulating free market!

Are there any poor libertarians?

They prefer the term “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” or “victims of the gubmit”

TheGameguru wrote:
BadKen wrote:

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the self-regulating free market!

Are there any poor libertarians?

Oh, yes.

Ronald Wright wrote:

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

That's one of the biggest lies that have been sold to lower-income conservatives. They don't want to stick it to the rich because they genuinely believe that they will one day BE the rich.

Gremlin wrote:

The opioid epidemic was deliberately manufactured, complete with public relations campaigns.

NYT: McKinsey Advised Purdue Pharma How to ‘Turbocharge’ Opioid Sales, Lawsuit Says

Jesus. I'm presuming McKinsey's other clients include the gun industry, forest fires, climate change, and Al-Qaeda How the f*ck did those guys sleep at night??

firesloth wrote:
Gremlin wrote:

The opioid epidemic was deliberately manufactured, complete with public relations campaigns.

NYT: McKinsey Advised Purdue Pharma How to ‘Turbocharge’ Opioid Sales, Lawsuit Says

Jesus. I'm presuming McKinsey's other clients include the gun industry, forest fires, climate change, and Al-Qaeda How the f*ck did those guys sleep at night??

Drugs, apparently.

firesloth wrote:

Jesus. I'm presuming McKinsey's other clients include the gun industry, forest fires, climate change, and Al-Qaeda How the f*ck did those guys sleep at night??

Beds made entirely from hundred dollar bills are surprisingly comfortable.

Via this Tweet:

Christopher Ingraham wrote:

Per Thomas Piketty roughly 60% of America's wealth is inherited, meaning most of America's riches are owned by people who didn't work for them. http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Alva...

Emphasis mine.

And Republicans want to do away with the estate tax...

BadKen wrote:

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the self-regulating free market!

And Trump stood in front of the nation bragging about the number of regulations he has ended.

firesloth wrote:

Via this Tweet:

Christopher Ingraham wrote:

Per Thomas Piketty roughly 60% of America's wealth is inherited, meaning most of America's riches are owned by people who didn't work for them. http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Alva...

Emphasis mine.

And Republicans want to do away with the estate tax...

Won't somebody think about the 80 family farms and closely-held small businesses that actually had to pay the estate tax in 2017? (They don't have to for 2018 because the Trump tax cuts boosts the exemption to $11.2 million through 2025.)

Ok so I can't tell if what Liam Nieson is trying to do something beneficial by being very real about something he has dealt with or if he is being a racist idiot. I have also been only hearing things in passing as the week has been busy. I don't see it being discussed anywhere so feel free to direct me elsewhere on the forums.

Hobear wrote:

Ok so I can't tell if what Liam Nieson is trying to do something beneficial by being very real about something he has dealt with or if he is being a racist idiot. I have also been only hearing things in passing as the week has been busy. I don't see it being discussed anywhere so feel free to direct me elsewhere on the forums.

I think he clumsily attempted to be very real about something he has dealt with, and in the process, said something monumentally stupid and racist.

Not just stupid and racist. It was also tremendously sexist and toxically masculine of him.

The last thing his friend needed after being sexually assaulted was to also feel guilty that Liam beat up or killed an innocent person just so he could feel "manly" and that he, in some f*cked up and twisted way, defended her "honor."

And all of that, of course, focused entirely on making Liam feel better about himself (and his maleness) and not the least about his friend and what she was going through.

He's attempting to be very real about an instance where he acted horribly racist and thought racist things, but in his attempt to explain it he's using racist language without realizing it, primarily because it was not rehearsed or run by anyone before he said it.

What he's trying to get at is that his initial desire for revenge needed an outlet badly and went straight to racism in an attempt to find one. Once he realized that he was horrified at himself for how easily he fell into the mindset of a lynch mob, how close to the surface such racism was inside himself. He's not talking about his past self's thoughts and actions in positive terms.

He's taking a conversation that he should be having with a therapist, and projecting it out on the entire world, without our consent, so there's that, too.

firesloth wrote:

Via this Tweet:

Christopher Ingraham wrote:

Per Thomas Piketty roughly 60% of America's wealth is inherited, meaning most of America's riches are owned by people who didn't work for them. http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Alva...

Emphasis mine.

And Republicans want to do away with the estate tax...

That also means 60% of America's wealth is not subject to income tax. The wealthy only pay much-lower capital gains taxes. It's those suckers, the rich and the middle class, who pay income tax.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Northam - "I did a blackface."

Fairfax - "I have been credibly accused of doing a sexual assault. I have hired the firm that defended Brett Kavanaugh to defend me."

Virginia's DA - "I also did a blackface."

The Virginia Democratic Party is literally on the verge of blowing a 3-0 lead in the line of succession and hand the Governorship back to the Republican Party. Truly, truly amazing.

EDIT: Also, Liam! WHY WOULD YOU RISK MESSING UP YOUR MONEY LIKE THAT? A movie press junket is probably the wrong place to bring out your 100-level statement about a PhD-level race and revenge problem.

Just me personally that a guy did blackface 40 years ago as a teenager doesn't tell me much about how he does his job now, especially if he is not defending it. I don't think he needs to resign, and if anyone is calling for him to resign they should be more loudly going after the people doing racist stuff right now today.

30 years ago as a graduating med student. In a tableaux with a KKK guy.

LeapingGnome wrote:

If anyone is calling for him to resign they should be more loudly going after the people doing racist stuff right now today.

Except the Republicans aren't going to go after any of those people. It's up to Democrats/liberals to keep the Democrat/liberal house clean, and the dirtiness of the Republican (little h) house isn't very pertinent there.

Tanglebones wrote:

30 years ago as a graduating med student. In a tableaux with a KKK guy.

I'm talking about the second guy that happened in 1980, not the first guy. Hard to keep them straight though!

LeapingGnome wrote:

Just me personally that a guy did blackface 40 years ago as a teenager doesn't tell me much about how he does his job now, especially if he is not defending it. I don't think he needs to resign, and if anyone is calling for him to resign they should be more loudly going after the people doing racist stuff right now today.

Undergraduate students are 18 or older. They aren't teenagers. They are legally adults. That distinction might seem pedantic, but we do live in a society where 18-year-old (or 25-year-old) white dudes are given the benefit of the doubt because of their "youth," but minorities as young as 13 are prosecuted as adults.

Also, the guy's job is the state's attorney general. That means a chunk of his job is to prosecute crimes and defend previous convictions. The criminal justice system is already the living embodiment of institutional racism. It just adds insult to injury to have the head honcho admit he dressed up in blackface.

Unless the guy was struck by lightning, had a major revelation about how sh*tty what he did was, *and* has worked tirelessly since then to prove he doesn't have his head up his white-privileged ass then he needs to go. It might suck for him, but, well, them's the breaks. He's not irreplaceable and it would do the Democratic Party wonders to show that we'll put money where our mouth is even if that means a white guy loses his job.

Frankly, the Democratic party could do a lot better than those guys. It is an open question, though, whether anyone not like that is electable in Virginia.

I understand your point OG and am sympathetic to it, but 18 is not a teenager? It is literally the definition.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I understand your point OG and am sympathetic to it, but 18 is not a teenager? It is literally the definition.

He was 19. According to the state and Merriam-Webster he was an adult.

Statement of Attorney General Mark R. Herring wrote:

In 1980, when I was a 19-year-old undergraduate in college, some friends suggested we attend a party dressed like rappers we listened to at the time, like Kurtis Blow, and perform a song. It sounds ridiculous even now writing it. But because of our ignorance and glib attitudes--and because we didn't have the appreciation for the experiences and perspective of others--we dressed up and put on brown makeup.

Wow Virginia is falling apart. I’m with others, all 3 of these guys need to go and the sooner the better. The 2 white guys in black face are not now nor should they ever be fit for political office. And I definitely believe the woman accusing the Lt Gov of some pretty horrendous sexual assault.

And maybe we just need to double down on electing women to office. I think it has to be assumed that men will have a high chance of having some heinous skeletons in the closet that will bring them down.