Today’s links The Sacklers woulda gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those darned meddling feds: A Supreme Court surprise might spell the end of one of the worst forms of elite impunity. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: None Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading The Sacklers woulda gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those darned meddling feds (permalink) The saga of the Sacklers, a multigenerational billionaire crime family of mass-murdering dope-peddlers, is an enraging parable about how the wealthy, the courts, and sadistic high-powered lawyers collude to destroy the lives of millions, profit handsomely, and evade justice. But there’s an unexpected twist to this tale. After the Sacklers procured a sham bankruptcy that denied their victims the right to sue while leaving their fortune largely intact, the Supreme Court – yes, this Supreme Court – saw through the scam and froze the process, pending a full hearing: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/us/supreme-court-purdue-pharma-opioid-settlement.html The Sacklers basically invented modern, legal dope peddling. Arthur Sackler, the family’s original crime-boss, revived the practice of direct-to-consumer drug marketing, dormant since the death of the medicine show, to peddle Valium. An aggressive and shrewd lobbyist, Arthur built the family fortune and, more importantly, its connections: https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-the-sackler-family-built-a-pharma-dynasty-and-fueled-an-american-calamity/ A generation later, the family’s business company created Oxycontin, and procured misleading and false research about the drug’s safety kickstarting the opioid epidemic, whose American body-count is closing in on a million dead. Armed with inflated claims about opioid safety,…Pluralistic: The Sacklers woulda gotten away with it if it wasn't for those darned meddling feds (11 August 2023)