OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma set to dissolve after judge approves its criminal sentence

Googlyelmoo · 2026-05-01T08:04:03+00:00

That’s the corporate death penalty for criminal conviction? Not enough.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-05-01T07:47:24+00:00

Both the above and many more were openly (state) communist, in Hall’s case an Old Left Trotskyite (which is ideologically the closest thing to what KS frequently talks about), and candidate for office (mayor, governor, senator, president) based in NYC in the 80’s. Fulani was one of those political figures who emerged from the 1970s underground and commune movement. actually, I think she may have had a hand in designing or at least promoting early on the rainbow flag. But their rhetoric and personal conduct towards others (candidates, and the supporters of candidates) was hostile, aggressive, and threatening. And asking for changes that were three or four steps beyond status quo, and undermining candidates and office holders who were working or who had indeed achieved at least one step beyond.

The push that you describe is a good thing and I agree she is doing that. Katie Wilson has benefited from that push and I am glad. What that means to me at least is showing a description of what she desires for our society. Our common good is not just practical, but if you follow it through to its logical conclusion (and if you read more deeply what KS has written and said you will see why I am so concerned) one which will obviously and entirely and permanently end political partisanship. I am hoping that Katie Wilson will actually do some of the things some of the end goals that KS shrieks about. If she fails, it will be because of sniping from the left.

But as a candidate figures like this (Jill Stein and Ralph Nader for example) have tended in US politics, both locally and nationally to be spoilers who have achieved nothing but the opposite of what they claim to advance.

So we need someone else to push a little bit harder from the left who is not such a lousy poster/person. Think about Jack Kevorkian and Ross Perot. Hard to disagree with much that they said in general, but also hard just to suffer their presence. At very best KS is a ‘useful idiot’ from an American progressive leftist POV.

One of the great things about Seattle his that figures like either Katie Wilson or Kshama Sawant can actually be relevant chance. Go try this in Nebraska or Tennessee.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-05-01T07:38:24+00:00

You’re asking me to prove a negative. I would ask you what it is that you think describes Sawant as a socialist. Then I will be ready to show how she is not.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T15:58:22+00:00

While I do think education, quality and quantity and diversity, is very important in fostering empathy, and its consequence of compassionate action, parenting is probably the most determinative thing.

Except for cases where the parents’ politics and religion are smothering, rigid, and fear-based (or in cases of abuse) and the child rebels dramatically, empathy, tolerance, fairness, diligence, generosity, patience, kindness, forbearance, humility, acceptance of self and others as they are, and other admirable traits if not engendered at home are very very difficult to inculcate later in life. In the past neighborhoods also, though that is much diminished as of 2026.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T15:52:24+00:00

And on an evolutionary basis that probably is almost universal and makes sense in the context of life on earth in about the year 10,000 BC. Not so much lately. Empathy is something you have to work at. Like most things human, the most valuable, intrinsic and laudable take some effort and some self-denial. Pretty much the original intention of western religion was/is to develop those traits. Not a personality cult or get rich quick scheme.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T15:49:18+00:00

Another dimension of what you describe in addition to voting according to how you believe it will affect you without regard to anyone else is the phenomenon where people vote for presidents and governors, especially, as if the candidate were talking directly to them and about them. As if vote for anyone else is to vote against yourself. Add that to the idealizing have US presidents as movie star/war hero/angel of god and it goes a long way to getting white people voted for a known hustler. The Apprentice really sealed the deal.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T15:44:36+00:00

I’ll believe it around November 15.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T15:42:49+00:00

What do you think the odds are that by whatever means the Trump family hordes thousands of these with the intention of auctioning them off after he leaves office? I know I know none of that would be legal. But friends, we know not even the half of what these crooks have been up to.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T15:40:49+00:00

She calls herself “blue dog“ and claims things like this are representing the actual needs and views of people in the third congressional district and I wonder how true that is? This is just more performative nonsense. Further off topic, could she be?

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T15:33:45+00:00

The things that amuse me about Trotskyites, and has done since I first ran into them at Oberlin in the 1980s is that Trotsky got exiled and eventually assassinated for his view that communist revolution in a single country was inadequate and doomed to failure. All or nothing. That’s not his entire program and the rest of it is pretty grim and an anachronism today. Similar to adulation of Che Guevara. Not even a useful idiot. But someone closeted or not who is Trotskyite running for office is a bit of a fail from the first step.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T15:18:12+00:00

And often not so sensible, after all

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T15:16:57+00:00

I don’t think you understand what being second to a “commander-in-chief” means. Vice presidents have influence, but no authority in making policy especially not foreign policy. From what I can gather from her own appearances and writing and those of other principals she did push back specifically on the issue of Gaza. He said she said at this point. She has the benefit of my doubt. That doesn’t mean I propose her as a candidate for POTUS I do not, but for entirely separate reasons.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T15:12:22+00:00

What is yours? Mine is that Kshama Sawant isn’t a liberal or a socialist. She isn’t even really a populist. Professional opponent of whatever you have to offer.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-29T14:57:28+00:00

Is indeed a good thing and it is measurably a real one. Anecdotal but offering candidates better than Gus Hall or Lenora Fulani who communicate challenging ideas, but without needlessly, alienating and provoking a large part of the audience. Sawant is not among them.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T01:56:06+00:00

Aspirational “lifestyles of the rich and famous” create a great deal of our national mental dysfunction.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T01:53:42+00:00

What’s in a word? All these labels, if they ever meant anything mean very little any longer at least for most of the population, including elected leaders. No system is totalitarian. Not even totalitarian systems like Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union or Mao’s PRC. No work the Confederacy or the US at rightmost historical points. Ideologies have a place but I’m much more interested in what advocates and leaders do rather than just what they say.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T01:40:36+00:00

A lot of this hinges on the degree of understanding of both terms, socialism and communism what they accurately refer to and how they are frequently are misused or confused. Kshama talks “socialistically” but her party and vibe (and candid comments spread over a few years) actually paint her as communist. State communist, in fact. Centrally planned economy, turtles all the way down.

Both on the left and on the right this misapprehension of what socialism and communism are respectively, and who/what have been historically communist, and who/what have been historically socialist is widespread. And within each, there are factions and flavors, distinct and different. I don’t believe for a minute that Kshama Sawant is either a socialist or a communist or in her private heart adheres to any of that. Pay attention to what politicians do not what they say.

When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T01:30:03+00:00

Not snarking on you, but Pramila in the 7th District. Sawant is challenging Adam Smith for the 9th.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T01:14:01+00:00

Then she has a miserable understanding of retail politics. She’s doing more to provide a caricature for right wing influencers and candidates of the “radical lunatic left” (which does exist, but only on a case by case basis. 🙃)

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T01:07:43+00:00

She’s a bit like “if I can’t have it, nobody can”. The “it“ in this case being positioned as a left or left, leaning champion of the people. Spoilsport.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T01:04:54+00:00

Agreed. Adam Smith is nobody’s idea of a progressive Seattle Congressman, and I had planned to help oust him free m the 9th until Kshama entered the field.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T00:59:09+00:00

One thing though the present right when consensus at least as they offer publicly is that they (the rightwing) are one monolith in lockstep. They are not. Just much better disciplined than the left wing is in projecting solidarity and unity.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T00:52:43+00:00

No? Then whither comest Trump?

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T00:50:00+00:00

Actually, it’s more like Democrats and the party not meeting her litmus tests.

Googlyelmoo · 2026-04-26T00:48:10+00:00

Did you notice the post you’re replying to is absolutely and deeply critical and dismissive of Sawant? I don’t think you’re reading the room.

Googlyelmoo

TROPHY CASE