Appeals court upholds ‘pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli lifetime ban from drug industry::Martin Shkreli served a criminal sentence for securities fraud related to a pharmaceuticals company he founded.
There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.
I use this Bush quote a lot, everyone thinks I’m an idiot but I just give them a little shit eating smirk, invade Iraq and claim I won prematurely.
I saw George W. Bush at a grocery store in Kennebunkport yesterday. I told him how cool it was to meet him in person, but I didn’t want to be a douche and bother him and ask him for photos or anything.
He said, “Oh, like you’re doing now?”
I was taken aback, and all I could say was “Huh?” but he kept cutting me off and going “huh? huh? huh?” and closing his hand shut in front of my face. I walked away and continued with my shopping, and I heard him chuckle as I walked off. When I came to pay for my stuff up front I saw him trying to walk out the doors with like fifteen Milky Ways in his hands without paying.
The girl at the counter was very nice about it and professional, and was like “Sir, you need to pay for those first.” At first he kept pretending to be tired and not hear her, but eventually turned back around and brought them to the counter.
When she took one of the bars and started scanning it multiple times, he stopped her and told her to scan them each individually “to prevent any electrical infetterence,” and then turned around and winked at me. I don’t even think that’s a word. After she scanned each bar and put them in a bag and started to say the price, he kept interrupting her by yawning really loudly.
Supposedly this was because he realized mid-sentence that he was about to hand his opponents a nice clean “shame on me” soundbite to use in all of their smear campaigns. So he panicked and had to make up the second part on the fly.
God, Republicans being worried about sound clips being used against them. What a quaint time the early 2000s was.
Roleplay with me for a brief minute here.
Let’s imagine he wasn’t banned for life from the drug industry. Let’s also imagine, and here’s the roleplaying, that you are a pharmaceutical company executive. Okay, you’re doing the best job you can. You’re trying to be an ethical pharma exec, the most ethical such a person can be. You’re trying to do your best by the people you serve, okay. Keep your employees in good wages, but also do no harm by your patients, either medically or financially. You know you’ve made some compromises to keep your company running smoothly, but by god, haven’t we all?
Now imagine Shkreli comes to you. “Bro! I’ve got some ideas! Let’s buy some patents! Let’s sell some drugs! Yeah baby I’m so back!” Do you, the nominally ethical pharma exec, work with Martin Shkreli?
No. Of course you don’t. You may have crossed a line or two, you aren’t in this totally to help your fellow human, but there are lines you won’t cross, and obviously Martin Shkreli is one of those lines.
But now, okay, now, I want you to imagine the kind of person who would say yes to working with Martin Shkreli. Imagine what that person is like, imagine the kind of business deals they make at other times. That person exists. In fact there’s lots of him.
Do you want that pharma exec working in the drug industry? I sure as hell do not.
My proposal, very briefly, is that we don’t ban Martin Shkreli from the drug industry. I say we let him go out and make deals. And every time he lands a deal, the FBI busts in and arrests both of them. Ban anyone he touches from working in the industry, too. Make him the Typhoid Mary, the Judas goat, of pharma ethics violations.
I remember watching the documentary about him that had a bunch of people trying to humanize him and say he actually wasn’t a bad person but it just made him look like an even bigger douchebag.
It’s such a slap in the face that you have to be this stupid to run into trouble for gouging people. Meanwhile every other speculator with above room temperature IQ is getting away with murder.
All I remember is he’s the original buyer of the “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” album by Wu-Tang for $2MM. I hope he never took a moment to listen to it before it was forfeitted on his behalf by the US government.
