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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

This is now a proven, well-worn playbook: put yourself at the center of a massive enterprise, and if/when it all goes to shit, basically demand a ransom: "If you don't let me go quietly, my scorched earth policy will ensure there is no carcass to pick over."

It is the playbook that CEOs with golden parachutes use as their companies go under, it is the playbook that Adam Neumann used when exiting WeWork, and it is even used by jailed business owners for leniency ("If I'm in jail, I'll have to shut my company and all of my poor employees will lose their jobs")

At some point, though, I do worry that metaphorical pitchforks become real ones. There are literally hundreds of thousands of family members of those who died due to Sacklers' greed, and they get to read that the Sacklers will remain one of the wealthiest families in the world.

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I'm one of those people. I didn't know my mother very well because she abandoned my family when I was 3 years old, but I did eventually start to get to know her again starting in 2012.

She was always struggling with addiction, but never did any form of heroin until she injured herself while walking down a stairwell drunk. She was prescribed OxyContin and quickly became extremely addicted.

My last conversation with her before she died was one where she was desperately begging me to find her any kind of opiate painkiller I could. This was because she had been cut off by her doctor who wouldn't renew her prescription. She ended up procuring some heroin which was apparently laced with fentanyl. She snorted it in her car in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven in Washington DC and overdosed and died in 2015.

I'm not going to pretend like she was living a productive life because she certainly wasn't. I'm also not going to pretend like she wasn't already an addict in other ways. But this product and this evil family who knowingly pushed it into Appalachia and other parts of the US where the residents are ignored by the political parties has caused tremendous damage to many people.

The first time I lost a friend to an overdose on oxycontin was in 2000 when I was a freshman in college. We were in southwestern Virginia, right in the heart of the emerging crisis. He was my co-worker at a Pizza Hut.

Nobody gave a shit about the droves of people dying until it hit New England 15 years later. It was only then that anyone even took notice in the media.

The biggest insult added to this injury for me personally was when I was a contestant in a hackathon for the US health and human services department in 2017. This is the organization that is in charge of the FDA and they had a whole slew of speakers talking about the opioid epidemic. At no point in the entire event did any of these bureaucrats admit any form of culpability and complicity in approving this drug. As far as I know not a single person in the FDA or HHS was ever fired for allowing this horrible product to be pushed like junk food into this country's most forgotten communities.

Remember: heroin was made illegal so the administration would have a reason to harass and arrest anti-war black people.

Just like cannabis was made illegal, to arrest anti-war hippies.

I've heard the Ehrlichman quote, but just to be super clear:

I am vehemently against most aspects of the drug war. I've even grown multiple cannabis plants with a hydroponic system/grow tent I setup in my basement. Heroin and opiates are on a different level due to the physical aspects of the addiction/withdrawal, as well as the effects opiates have on suppressing psychological pain and creating a slippery slope for treatable mental illness to untreatable mental illness.

While I support allowing doctors to administer it in designated, supervised locations, I'm 100% against the Vancouver inspired approaches advocated for by people like Johann Hari. I was once a supporter of these approaches. I witnessed implementation in 3 different communities. I was wrong, and it's an utter disaster. Giving needles to addicts so they can continue to support the black market is a dumb idea. I watched it turn entire neighborhoods into inhospitable hell holes in Asheville, SF, and Vancouver. No thank you.

For some reason the problems of opiates tend to not manifest when availability and quality are stable and prices affordable. Nobody used needles when heroin was available OTC.

Yup. Become too big to fail and you can do anything.

We have decided that economic stability and stability in general is more important than honesty, accountability, abiding by the law, or pretty much anything else. If we hold anyone accountable for anything the stock market might go down.

The same seems to happen in politics, but it works a bit differently. If you hold a politician responsible for gross incompetence or worse, such as George Bush Jr. for Iraq WMDs or Donald Trump for January 6th, then they or their allies might retaliate or hold back legislation that you want passed. On top of that extreme partisan division makes this worse by making it virtually impossible to get members of a politician's own party to hold them responsible for anything. I realized recently that extreme partisanship makes it easier for politicians of both sides to get away with bullshit.

Is there any legal mechanism the public can use to try to kick pro-corporate judges out of power?

It starts with the DOJ. They are afraid of going after big corporations because the corporations have more resources than the DOJ so it’s hard to win. In addition a lot of DOJ leaders don’t want to harm their chances at getting a cushy job at one of these corporations.

DOJ did get at least $2 billion (their press release also says $8?) previously.

I hope they intervene here and or follow up with criminal charges against the individual Sacklers as individuals.

> It starts with the DOJ. They are afraid of going after big corporations

DoJ can't (except in special circumstances) legally stand in the place of harmed individuals and go after liable actors; because this a bankruptcy case DoJ is involved though, and opposes the settlement, as stated in the article.

Here is an example from the financial crisis in 2008:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/holder-big-banks-...

I also remember reading a book about epo and J&J. There the situation also was that the government prosecutors were reluctant to touch the case because they knew J&J would outspend them with their lawyers. Then a private lawyer took on the case and after years reached a settlement but in the process was close to bankrupting his law firm.

How the hell do you outspend the federal government (Lemme guess, you lobby congress or curry favor with the executive to put limits on the amount of spending you can do on cases that look suspiciously like yours).

> How the hell do you outspend the federal government?

Veey easily if you are a big corp and its an existential threat; the DoJ has lots of funding, sure, but also lots of competing priorities.

Very simple. These agencies are underfunded. The IRS also can’t afford to do enough audits.

> Here is an example from the financial crisis in 2008

I am not disputing the existence of the general phenomenon, I am saying the facts of the immediate case (including those directly in the article) contradict the assertion that it is the factor responsible for the decision at issue in the case under discussion.

Doesn't that run counter to the idea of an independent judiciary?

Independent Judiciary means independent of the executive and legislative branches. It doesn't mean immunity to public rebuke. Plenty of judges have to renew their mandate by standing for election.

The incentives associated with having your career tied to elections can end up being suboptimal, so we could debate what the most effective method would be, but it's an example of how a judge can be removed from power by the public.

> Independent Judiciary means independent of the executive and legislative branches. It doesn't mean immunity to public rebuke.

This seems to be confirmed by the first sentence of the wikipedia article on "Judicial independence", but the second sentence also mentions not being subject to influence from "private or partisan interests".

>Plenty of judges have to renew their mandate by standing for election.

this is mostly a US thing, and only in certain states. Federal judges are appointed AFAIK.

Private means only for one person or group. It doesn't apply. And public rebuke doesn't imply partisanship.

Is the idea of an independent judiciary just a myth to manufacture consent?

It seems obvious to me that judges apply their own ideologies in their rulings. But IANAL, maybe I'm just too cynical.

Nullify the jury of the people with the pitchforks.

In modern democracies it should be via legislation, and enabled by elected officials. In practice, it should be difficult to elect parties that promote corporate-hostile policies.

Judges can be impeached by your elected officials, so you can demand that of your representatives.

Demanding anything of a representative that goes contra to their donors, who grace both sides with their money, is a quick exercise in failure.

Even if it exists, it's not something the public has true access to. These laws are not made for the benefit of the masses.

Go big or go home.

You're being downvoted but this is actually well-understood and phrased in many different ways, including:

> If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.

- J Paul Getty

> If you owe the bank $100 billion, that's the government's problem.

- Me

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