Buttigieg’s Former Firm Shells Out $573 Million to Evade Lawsuits Over Role in Opioid Crisis
Also busted for fixing bread prices in Canada
The controversial consulting firm where Pete Buttigieg worked after graduating from Oxford has agreed to pay $573 million as part of a multi-state legal settlement over its role advising major drug manufacturers during the opioid crisis.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Consulting giant McKinsey & Co. has reached a $573 million settlement with states over its work advising OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and other drug manufacturers to aggressively market opioid painkillers, according to people familiar with the matter.
The deal, reached with 47 states and the District of Columbia and expected to be publicly announced Thursday, would avert civil lawsuits that attorneys general could bring against McKinsey, the people said. The majority of the money will be paid upfront, with the rest dispensed in four yearly payments starting in 2022.
Buttigieg was recently sworn in as secretary of transportation, becoming the second openly gay individual to serve in a presidential cabinet. He worked at McKinsey from 2007 to 2010. One of Buttigieg's clients, the Canadian supermarket chain Loblaws, admitted to taking part in a scheme to artificially increase the price of bread over a 14-year period that included Buttigieg's tenure at McKinsey.
The Canadian price-fixing scheme became what young people refer to as a "meme" after New York Times editorial board member Binyamin Applebaum confronted Buttigieg over his role in the scandal during an interview in January 2020.
Applebaum epically accused the former mayor of Indiana's fourth-largest city (South Bend) of having served "on the front lines of corporate downsizing" and "corporate price fixing," causing Buttigieg to lash out with rage. The noble journalist, he dangerously alleged, was trafficking in "bullshit."
Applebaum's unassailable retort—"You worked for a company that was fixing bread prices"—will go down in history as one of the greatest achievements in American journalism.
Peter Schweizer: Politicians Use Marijuana Legalization to Get Rich
National legalization of marijuana possession, production, and sale will provide politicians with another means of enrichment through corruption, warned Peter Schweizer on Friday, author of Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite and president of the Government Accountability Institute (GAI).
Schweizer and GAI colleague Eric Eggers spoke with Sean Hannity on the latter’s eponymous radio show to discuss the GAI’s newest report, “Cannabis Cronyism.”
Schweizer explained how state-level politicians and government officials in states with legalized cannabis use the regulatory apparatus — including the selling of cannabis licensing — to essentially extort companies seeking legal permission to enter the marijuana industry.
Schweizer remarked:
What’s happening in this these states [where marijuana is] being legalized [is that] the politicians — meaning, most times, the governors, sometimes other state cabinet officials — get to pick and choose who is the one that’s going to get the gold mine [and] that’s going to get a limited license in a controlled market and is going to be able to actually sell marijuana legally, and guess what?
By virtue the fact that they get to pick who gets the licenses, it’s not just the state governments who are going to make money, it’s actually the politicians themselves.
…
The people who are making the money are the politicians, the politicians’ family members, [and] lobbyists connected to the politicians. They’re all getting rich through this legalized scheme.
It’s not really about personal freedom. It’s not about medical marijuana. It’s about politicians finding yet another pocket in which they can enrich themselves.
LISTEN:
Eggers remarked on the mutual financial benefit between Democrat control of Congress and the White House and the marijuana industry. He said, “The marijuana industry is saying, ‘Hey now that the Democrats are in charge, we stand to do very well.’ The reality is as we’ve uncovered in this report is that actually Democrats do really well as a result of the marijuana industry itself.”
Eggers recalled a Politico report highlighting expectations of a financial windfall within the marijuana industry resulting from Democrat congressional majorities and a Democrat president.
Designation of marijuana dispensaries as “essential” across dozens of states amid assorted shutdown and stay-at-home decrees may be a function of the $21 billion cannabis industry’s lobbying efforts, Eggers speculated.
No comments:
Post a Comment