Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
My text messages also have correct capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and no text message abbreviations and emojis. What can I say? I am an old guy.
(Baldo)
Especially the part about action films.
The legal cases brought by so many state attorneys general and individuals against the odious Sackler family, whose company Purdue Pharma was responsible for so many opioid deaths, is going before a bankruptcy judge this week who will decide on a plea deal brought by some state attorneys general.
John Oliver gives a masterful expose of why the deal that has been proposed is such a bad one but will likely get approved. Basically the deal is such that the Sacklers, while pretending to pay billions, will actually get off very lightly by having their considerable personal assets mostly protected and will also be given sweeping blanket immunity from the lawsuits of those who did not agree to be part of this deal and even future lawsuits. They will not even have to plead guilty to any personal wrongdoing in the case, blaming it all on the company even though they were very hands-on in driving the practices that led to massive rates of addiction.
The bankruptcy judge hearing the case has a history of being sympathetic to these kinds of deals which is why the Sacklers shopped around so that they could appear before him in the small town of White Plains, NY. This case shows how the rich can manipulate the legal system to their benefit.
I hope that this show helps to create a big enough uproar that he has second thoughts about letting them get off so easy.
On his show Last Week Tonight, he points out the surprising fact that in the US, emergency medical services, the ambulances and the medical technicians who come in an emergency and treat and transport people to hospitals, are not classified as essential services in the communities they serve, and as a result the workers are paid very poorly and lack benefits despite being hailed for their life-saving work.
More disturbingly, private equity firms are now moving in and taking over some of the private companies that provide these services, which usually means that they will be stripped of assets, workers will be treated even worse, and prices will rise.
This is the madness that results when health care is privatized.
In these days of Zoom meetings, I have seen people exploit the Zoom feature that allows you to use their stock backgrounds and also allows you to create your own to create the most exotic and even bizarre backgrounds. I myself, being the old fuddy-duddy that I am, use just the boring but real background of my living room.
It is a common tactic of people who like to spread false information but seek to avoid taking responsibility for their statements to disingenuously say they are ‘just asking questions’.
While much attention is focused on income inequality in the US, a much more glaring discrepancy exists with wealth. On average, the average Black person has just 13% of the wealth of the average white person. This is because most people’s wealth is tied up in their homes but for the longest time, Black families were denied access to buying homes due to racist polices. such as real estate covenants that prohibited the sale of homes to them, that were aided by federal, state, and local governments. As a result, they could not build up their assets and pass them on to their children, which is how much wealth is accumulated.
John Oliver looked at this situation and points out that when it comes to this particular issue, the individual cases of harm done to Black people is quite clear, with some of the victims still alive, which makes the remedy of reparations to right the wrongs, also clear.
There are all manner of political shenanigans going on in Texas as Republicans try to legislate even more restrictive voting practices. Most Democratic members of the state legislature left the state to prevent a quorum and the governor Greg Abbott has threatened to arrest them if they return. Yes, this is what democracy has come to.
One reason that Texas has become such a focus is that Joe Biden narrowed the gap in that state even though he lost it to Trump. The margin was the smallest in 24 years. Republicans seem to fear that if Democrats start winning Texas, they will have a lock on the electoral college, and they are pulling out all the stops to prevent that outcome.
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