After RICO conviction of Opioid maker, Trenton should come clean on Big Pharma connections

By Rubashov
 
On Monday, as Trenton Democrats failed in their attempt to forcibly mandate a Big Pharma product, federal prosecutors in Boston were securing tough sentences in their first Big Pharma conviction in an opioid crisis that has resulted in more than 400,000 deaths.
 
NPR called the criminal trial of top executives at Insys Therapeutics a “landmark case” and the “first successful prosecution of high-ranking pharmaceutical executives linked to the opioid crisis, including onetime billionaire John Kapoor.” 
 
Kapoor and his four co-defendants were found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy – a charge that is often used to prosecute drug dealers and mob bosses.  In this case the federal government used racketeering to go after corporate executives.
 
The Big Pharma executives were found guilty of running a nationwide bribery scheme. According to court documents, from 2012 until 2015, the pharmaceutical company paid doctors to prescribe opioids in high doses and give it to patients who did not necessarily need it.
 
To facilitate their scheme, the Big Pharma executives created a sham "speakers program” where doctors were paid if they wrote a lot of prescriptions.  It’s the same kind of scam that was used by special interests to pay-off friendly politicians. 

Senate President Steve Sweeney and Senate Democrat Leader Loretta Weinberg have promised their political bosses that they will remove the rights of people to have religious and conscientious objections to the use of Big Pharma products, in this session of the Legislature.  There is a real concern here, because pharmaceutical companies like the one sentenced in federal court on Monday have used their billions to shout down average voters.
 
In 2016, Insys Therapeutics underwrote an effort to defeat a ballot initiative in Arizona.  This included an advertising campaign claiming that opposing the measure was to "protect children".
 
Insys Therapeutics’ allies included major state politicians, the Association of County School Superintendents, the Hospital and Healthcare Association, and several other community organizations.  Big Pharma won… defeating the ballot initiative 51.3% to 48.7%. 
 
That’s why it is so important for New Jersey reformers to demand that a fully transparent website be created that details all of Big Pharma’s influence in New Jersey.  There have been too many deaths as a result of that influence and the resulting lax oversight by government.  400,000 dead and counting…
 
The time for transparency is now.

Sweeney camp says African-American legislators guilty of endangering children’s lives

By Rubashov
 
There is an increasing sense of desperation in the attempt by Senate President Steve Sweeney and his camp to pass a series of controversial and unpopular bills that they waited until after the November election to spring on the voters.  That’s right, everyone who is now pushing so loudly for things like this forced  vaccination bill didn’t have the balls to make so much as a squeak before the election, when the voters could do something about it. 
 
Everyone party to this lame duck scam now is being dishonest with the voters – and the voters know it.
 
Sweeney’s latest act of desperation happened late yesterday, when the Democrat Senate President trotted out Senator Declan O’Scanlon (R-13) to suggest that Assemblyman Jamel Holley (D-20) would be culpable in the deaths of children.  Yes, that is how desperate they’ve become.  In an exchange on InsiderNJ, Senator O’Scanlon made this statement about Assemblyman Holley:
 
“Let’s be absolutely clear, the science is overwhelming, vaccines save lives.  Children’s lives.  As our solid, high levels of vaccination rates have fallen the occurrence of outbreaks of preventable, potentially life-altering or even deadly diseases has increased.  If Assemblyman Holley, or any other legislator, is successful in his effort to derail this bill he/they must accept responsibility for the results of their actions.
 
“It is not inconceivable that those results may include needless, preventable deaths of children.  And please don’t try to compare the infinitesimally smaller risk of vaccines to the dramatically greater risk of failure to maintain a high level of vaccination.
 
“Lastly, it isn’t just the optionally non-vaccinated that are at risk.  The elderly, the very young, the immunocomprosmised who can’t be vaccinated, the 1 in 10 children who are vaccinated who don’t develop immunity and wide swaths of the population whose immunity has lessoned over time. It will be these potentially permanently impacted lives that Assemblyman Holley will have to answer for.”
 
The Sweeney camp – with Republican Declan O’Scanlon as its spokesperson – are a group of non-scientists playing with science.  They make the claim that New Jersey’s vaccination rates have fallen and we are now facing a crisis.  Like it wasn’t a crisis before the election, but it is one now.  Now, in lame duck, children are going to die – and it’s going to be Assemblyman Holley’s fault!
 
But this simply isn’t true.  According to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), New Jersey’s vaccination rates are higher than the national average.  So why did this crisis suddenly materialize after an election.  Isn’t that what you have an election for – to discuss issues like this, openly and honestly? 
 
Everyone know that the lame duck session is when you sneak through all the legislation average voters don’t want or care about as paybacks for those special interests who supported you during the election.  You know, the election where you didn’t discuss all these controversial issues in an honest and transparent manner.
 
Skepticism towards the pharmaceutical industry is not without reason.  After all, didn’t they tell us that opioids were the bomb, that they were just the thing for all our troubles, and not to worry?  Didn’t a court just rule that a major pharmaceutical company suppressed evidence that their product gave women uterine cancer?  And they suppressed it for three decades! 
 
So why should we listen to Sweeney and O’Scanlon’s assurances that Pharma knows best?  Isn’t that how the opioid crisis came about?
 
This is why you don’t do this kind of legislation after the election.  You do it before the voters have cast their votes, so that they have a say, so democracy can work.  Instead, we have the lame duck scam, and a lot of chest beating about a problem that wasn’t a problem the politicians wanted to talk about just a few months ago. 
 
And the desperation of the Sweeney camp is palpable.  Just look at the madness of the language employed by Sweeney spokesperson O’Scanlon:  “If Assemblyman Holley, or any other legislator, is successful in his effort to derail this bill he/they must accept responsibility for the results of their actions.  It is not inconceivable that those results may include needless, preventable deaths of children.” 
 
O’Scanlon is employing a very weird, highly unethical, form of bullying.  Afterall, given so loose an argument, wouldn’t this make Sweeney and O’Scanlon responsible for all the deaths resulting from their exemption?  If you really, really believed the b.s. you are laying on Holley, why would you exempt ANY child?  Would not their amendment be a kiss of death for those students? 
 
The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases reports the risk of death from measles is higher for adults than for children.  So why isn’t the Sweeney camp mandating the vaccination of every public employee, everyone on any form of public assistance, every incarcerated adult and juvenile, and everyone attending a state supported institution of higher learning? 
 
The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases recommends that all adults born in 1957 or later get “at least one dose of the MMR vaccine” and that all college and university students, healthcare personnel, and international travelers “receive two doses of the MMR vaccine.”  Heck, if we are talking science, that’s what the actual scientists are advising.
 
And the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases makes this politically-incorrect observation…
 
FACT: Most cases of measles in the US result from infections acquired in other countries or are linked to imported cases.
 
Holy dog crap!  So how come Sweeney, Murphy, and the Democrats are so committed to porous borders???  Like… if they were really committed to stopping the measles and protecting children…
 
Why is O’Scanlon silent on this point?
 
Have you noticed yet that the Democrat Senate President has successfully co-opted a Republican and got him to do his dirty work?  Sadly, this has happened before, on issues ranging from the imposition of the state income tax to the repeal of the death penalty.
 
Meanwhile, a host of very important issues go entirely unaddressed – beginning with property taxes.  Yeah, that thing that New Jersey leads the world in.  The highest property taxes in America, along with the highest foreclosure rate, along with the worst for business climate and job creation.  Why are none of the issues that average voters actually care about being taken up by the Legislature?
 
Why?  Because average voters don’t pay lobbyists, that's why… 

It’s like the Princeton University study says…
 
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
 
The Democrats know this – just as they know that they will always be able to find a Republican to help them push one of their special interest scams over the line.  Maybe Republicans should just refuse to participate in Sweeney’s scams until he agrees to actually address the important jobs that the average voters want the Legislature to do – like lower property taxes.