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Pedophiles for Purdue Pharma: With amici like these…
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Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

The US Supreme Court building. Standing in front of it is a cartoon illustration of a flasher exposing himself. The flasher's face and genitals have been covered with Oxycontin tablets. Red text from a vintage horror-movie title card reading 'THE SUPREME EXCITEMENT OF OUR TIME' is superimposed over the top right corner.

Pedophiles for Purdue Pharma (permalink)

It's not merely that the Sacklers – a multigenerational, ultra-wealthy drug-pusher dynasty – made billions while murdering hundreds of thousands of Americans by lying about the safety of Oxycontin, the flagship product of their Purdue Pharma drug company. It's that they got away with it.

After a decade-long crime spree in which the family used a combination of elite philanthropy and vicious legal threats against critics (including me!) to maintain a squeaky-clean image, the Sackler name is finally a synonym for mass murder, and will forever be a curse. But though they lost their name, they kept their billions.

In so doing, the Sacklers exposed the rot at the heart of American bankruptcy, bringing an obscure, deeply corrupt system into the public eye.

Bankruptcy has always been with us. As Michael Hudson reminds us, "Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid." Without some system for discharging debt, control over the entire productive capacity of a society is eventually shifted to a hereditary creditor class, which precipitates calamity:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

But America has a bifurcated bankruptcy system. For normal people, bankruptcy is more punishment than relief. For the ultra-wealthy, bankruptcy is a system of total impunity for ghastly crimes. Simply undertake those crimes through the "personage" of an LLC and you're on easy street:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/bankruptcy-protects-fake-people-brutalizes-real-ones/

(This is America, so of course there's a racial dimension to punishment-by-bankruptcy. Broke white people are funneled into quick means of discharging debts while people of color are pushed into "expensive and lengthy repayment plans")

https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2376

Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. At a certain point, it wasn't possible for the Sacklers to maintain their cuddly billionaire charade. It was time to shut down the Big Store con, cool the mark, and blow town. For the Sacklers, that meant going to court.

The Sacklers were facing hundreds of billions of dollars in personal liability for their individual and collective corrupt acts. They were being sued by estates, by survivors, by cities, by states, and by the USA itself. If even a fraction of these claims succeeded, the Sacklers would be wiped out. To get away clean, the Sacklers needed a plan.

Enter the "Third-Party Nonconsensual Release," a bizarre and wildly corrupt feature of elite bankruptcy. The Sacklers offered the court a deal: they would take the family business, Purdue Pharma, into bankruptcy, and kick in a few billion out of their collective hoard. In return, the court would settle all claims against both Purdue and the family. The family would not have to go bankrupt. They could keep their billions. And no one would be allowed to sue them for their opioid killing-spree, ever:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/18/lets-make-a-deal/#art-of-the-deal

You can't make this argument in front of just any judge. It takes a Very Special judge, with a Very Special brain, to grant a proposal like this. There were just three courts in the USA where the Sacklers were likely to find a willing accomplice: two in Texas, one in New York. They chose the Empire State.

To get their case in front of Judge Robert Drain, the Sacklers opened a tiny, empty office in White Plains, New York. They waited 190 days (satisfying the six-month residency requirement with a few days to spare), and then filed in the Southern District of New York. They hid invisible metadata in the PDF of their filing, which tricked the Case Management/Electronic Case Files system into putting their case in front of Drain. They even pre-captioned their brief with "RDD" for Robert D Drain:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/23/a-bankrupt-process/#sacklers

The Sacklers' plan worked. Judge Drain nonconsensually settled all the third-party claims against the Sacklers, without requiring the Sacklers to give up the majority of their fortunes. Then, Drain resigned from the bench and took a cushy job with the BigLaw corporate crime enablers at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/judge-who-oversaw-purdue-sears-bankruptcies-join-law-firm-skadden-2023-04-13/

But the story doesn't end here. While this kind of bankruptcy judge shopping and third-party nonconsensual releases had been SOP for some of the most vicious and unrepentant institutional criminals of the century, the Sacklers' impunity was so egregious, so revolting, that the Supreme Court (yes, this Supreme Court!) agreed to hear a case challenging its constitutionalilty:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

As the hearing looms, various "friends of the court" are filing amicus briefs, trying to ensure that the Supremes understand what's at stake here. This is a normal part of any Supreme Court case, but what's less normal is who these amici are, and what they want the court to understand.

Writing for the New York Times, Abbie Van Sickle rounds up an eye-popping summary of these amici and their concerns. Tldr? There are a lot of pedophiles who are briefing for the Sacklers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/us/politics/oxycontin-supreme-court-purdue-sacklers.html

First on deck is the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, who remind the court that nonconsensual third-party releases were essential to the Catholic Church's ability to walk away from the untold number of children abused by the clergy who were protected by the Church:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-124/288262/20231027145345921_23-124%20bsac%20USCCB%20Purdue%20Pharma.pdf

Next up are the Boy Scouts of America. Like the Bishops, the Scouts want the Court to remember that the decades of sexual abuse committed by scoutmasters who were protected by the BSA while their victims were marginalized and silenced would have destroyed the Scouts if the victims had been able to get justice. It was only through the magic of the Third-Party Nonconsensual Release that the BSA was able to live on, even after decades of unspeakable crimes.

However the case pans out, there is change in the air. Johnson & Johnson's bid to escape liability for the years it spent knowingly telling women to dust their vulvas with asbestos failed (thank goodness):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-and-j-jk/#risible-gambit

Bankruptcy scholars are taking aim at the obviously corrupt practice of bankruptcy shopping:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/07/hr-4193/#shoppers-choice

And the judges who specialize in these Third-Party Nonconsensual Releases are dropping like flies. Not long after Judge Drain went through the revolving door at a BigLaw firm, (ex-)Judge David Jones was forced to resign when it emerged that he was romantically involved with a lawyer who kept winning huge windfalls for her clients in his court:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/16/texas-two-step/#david-jones

There's never just one ant. The kinds of judges, lawyers, law firms and corporations who use the bankruptcy system this way are bound to be corrupt in many, many other ways as well. Rooting out elite bankruptcy fraud doesn't have to stop in bankruptcy court. Anyone arrogant and immoral enough to pull these scams will have plenty of other skeletons in their closets.

(Image: Jesse Collins, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)

Please Help Duane Wilkins Pay His Medical Debt https://www.gofundme.com/f/please-help-duane-wilkins-pay-his-medical-debt (h/t Jon Lasser)
Inside America's School Internet Censorship Machine https://www.wired.com/story/inside-americas-school-internet-censorship-machine/
What Drives This Madness On Small Modular Nuclear Reactors? https://cleantechnica.com/2023/11/30/what-drives-this-madness-on-small-modular-nuclear-reactors/ (h/t Slashdot)

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This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Berlin hacker con will use RFID badges to simulate life in a totalitarian panopticon https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/wiki/OpenBeacon_with_OpenAMD/

#15yrsago RIP, Forrest J Ackerman https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-ackerman6-2008dec06-story.html

#15yrsago Googling Security: book that opens your eyes to how much you disclose to Google https://memex.craphound.com/2008/12/05/googling-security-book-that-opens-your-eyes-to-how-much-you-disclose-to-google/

#10yrsago 75% of American silent feature films lost https://variety.com/2013/film/news/library-of-congress-only-14-of-u-s-silent-films-survive-1200915020/

#10yrsago NSA collecting unimaginable quantities of mobile phone location data for guilt-by-association data-mining https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-tracking-cellphone-locations-worldwide-snowden-documents-show/2013/12/04/5492873a-5cf2-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html

#10yrsago Democratic lawmakers share a squalorous house in DC https://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/04/politics/real-alpha-house/index.html

#10yrsago Rob Ford police document: allegations of heroin use and more https://torontolife.com/category/city/toronto-politics/2013/12/04/new-bombshells-from-police-documents-suggest-rob-ford-may-have-tried-heroin-been-blackmailed/

#10yrsago NYPD shoot at unarmed man, hit bystanders, charge man for making them shoot https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/nyregion/unarmed-man-is-charged-with-wounding-bystanders-shot-by-police-near-times-square.html?smid=pl-share

#10yrsago Orange UK plumbs the depths of insulting, stupid marketing, finds a new low https://memex.craphound.com/2013/12/05/orange-uk-plumbs-the-depths-of-insulting-stupid-marketing-finds-a-new-low/

#5yrsago What it’s like to be a woman reporter on a cryptocurrency cruise where nearly all the other women are sex-workers https://web.archive.org/web/20181205144647/https://breakermag.com/trapped-at-sea-with-cryptos-nouveau-riche/

#5yrsago See you in court: amid protests, shameless Wisconsin GOP neuters the incoming governor in an all-night, lame-duck session https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/1205/Wisconsin-GOP-pass-slew-of-measures-during-lameduck-session

#5yrsago British Member of Parliament publishes 250 pages of damning internal Facebook documents that had been sealed by a US court https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-committees/culture-media-and-sport/Note-by-Chair-and-selected-documents-ordered-from-Six4Three.pdf

#5yrsago The longest-serving Congressman in US history proposes a four fixes for American democracy https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/john-dingell-how-restore-faith-government/577222/

#5yrsago RIP, George HW Bush: a mass-murderer and war-criminal https://theintercept.com/2018/12/05/george-h-w-bush-1924-2018-american-war-criminal/

#5yrsago Trump cybersecurity advisor Rudy Giuliani has no idea how the internet works https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/rudy-giuliani-doesnt-seem-to-know-how-the-internet-works.html

#5yrsago Not just breaches: Never, ever use Quora https://waxy.org/2018/12/why-you-should-never-ever-use-quora/

#5yrsago Obamacare study: 25% decline in home delinquencies among newly insured poor people https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-04/how-access-to-obamacare-cuts-late-housing-payments

#5yrsago Poland rejects the EU’s copyright censorship plans, calls it #ACTA2 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/11/poland-saved-europe-acta-can-they-save-us-acta2

#1yrago Monopoly's event-horizon: The true capitalist singularity https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/05/eldritch-physics/#wouldnt-start-from-here

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: James Boyle (http://james-boyle.com/).

Currently writing:

A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025
The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2024
Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM
Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast: Don’t Be Evil https://craphound.com/articles/2023/12/03/dont-be-evil/
Upcoming appearances:

The Lost Cause at Flyleaf Books (Chapel Hill), Dec 5
https://www.flyleafbooks.com/doctorow-2023
The Geneva Dialog (Dec 7)
https://genevadialogue.ch/event/geneva-manual-event/

Recent appearances:

Explore the Future of the 🔥 Climate and Information Climate (Andrew Revkin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OGT-cvs4_Q
Digital Markets Act; Interoperability; Entrenchment; Copyright; "What-About-Ism" (Digital Markets Research Hub)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm23pO5_WKM
Science fiction for a dystopian present (Institute of Art and Ideas)
https://iai.tv/video/science-fiction-for-a-dystopian-present-cory-doctorow?_auid=2020

Latest books:

"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books, February 2024
Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
Unauthorized Bread: a graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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