{"id":107621,"date":"2018-03-19T12:00:23","date_gmt":"2018-03-19T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=107621"},"modified":"2018-03-17T14:57:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-17T14:57:01","slug":"americas-shkreli-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/03\/americas-shkreli-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Shkreli Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

9 Mar 2018 – <\/em>Martin Shkreli was sentenced today to seven years in prison. What, if anything, does Shkreli\u2019s downfall tell us about modern America?<\/p>\n

Shkreli\u2019s early life exemplified the rags-to-riches American success story. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in April 1983, to parents who immigrated from Albania and worked as janitors in New York apartment buildings. Shkreli attended New York\u2019s Hunter College High School, a public school for intellectually gifted young people, and in 2005 received a bachelor\u2019s degree in business administration from Baruch College.<\/p>\n

But soon thereafter, Shkreli turned toward shady deals. He started his own hedge fund, betting that the stock prices of certain biotech companies would drop. Then he used financial chat rooms on the Internet to savage those companies, causing their prices to drop and his bets to pay off.<\/p>\n

In 2015, Shkreli founded and became CEO Turing Pharmaceuticals. Under his direction Turing spent $55 million for the U.S. rights to sell a drug called Daraprim.\u00a0Developed in 1953, Daraprim is the only approved treatment for toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease that can cause birth defects in unborn babies, and lead to seizures, blindness, and death in cancer patients and people with AIDS. Daraprim is on the World Health Organization\u2019s list of Essential Medicines.<\/p>\n

Months after he bought the drug, Schkreli raised its price by over 5,000 percent, from $13.50 a pill to $750.00.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Shkreli was roundly criticized, but he was defiant: \u201cNo one wants to say it, no one\u2019s proud of it, but this is a capitalist society, a capitalist system and capitalist rules.\u201d He said he wished he had raised the price even higher, and would buy another essential drug and raise its price, too.<\/p>\n

In February 2016, Shkreli was called before a congressional committee to justify his price increase on Daraprim. He refused to answer any questions, pleading the Fifth Amendment. After the hearing Shkreli tweeted, \u201cHard to accept that these imbeciles represent the people in our government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shkreli was subsequently arrested in connection with an unrelated scheme to defraud his former hedge fund investors. In anticipation of his criminal trial, Shkreli boasted to the New Yorker<\/em> magazine, \u201cI think they\u2019ll return a not-guilty verdict in two hours. There are going to be jurors who will be fans of mine. I walk down the streets of New York and people shake my hand. They say, \u2018I want to be just like you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

During his trial, Shkreli strolled into a room filled with reporters and made light of a particular witness, for which the trial judge rebuked him. On his Facebook page he mocked the prosecutors, <\/a>and told news outlets they were a \u201cjunior varsity\u201d team.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Martin Shkreli (2nd R), CEO of Turing Pharmaceutical, is brought out of 26 Federal Plaza by law enforcement officials after being arrested for security fraud. Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

He retaliated against journalists<\/a> who criticized him by purchasing internet domains associated with their names and ridiculing them on the sites. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t call these people \u2018journalists,\u2019\u201d he wrote in an email to Business Insider<\/em>. He said on Facebook that if he were acquitted he\u2019d be able to have sex with a female journalist he often posted about online.<\/p>\n

After his conviction, Shkreli called the case \u201ca witch hunt of epic proportions, and maybe they found one or two broomsticks.\u201d As she imposed sentence last Friday, the judge cited Shkrili\u2019s \u201cegregious multitude of lies,\u201d noting also that he \u201crepeatedly minimized\u201d his conduct.<\/p>\n

Shkreli\u2019s story is\u00a0tragic and pathetic, but I\u00a0ask you: How different is Martin Shkreli from other figures who dominate American life today, even at the highest rungs?<\/p>\n

Shkreli will do whatever it takes to win, regardless of the consequences for anyone else. He believes that the norms other people live by don\u2019t apply to him. His attitude toward the law is that anything he wants to do is okay unless it is clearly illegal \u2013 and even if illegal, it\u2019s\u00a0okay if he can get away with it.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s\u00a0contemptuous of anyone who gets in his way \u2013 whether judges, prosecutors, members of Congress, or journalists. He remains unapologetic for what he did. He is utterly shameless.<\/p>\n

Sound familiar? The Shkreli personality disorder can be found on Wall Street, in the executive suites of some of America\u2019s largest corporations, in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, in some of our most prestigious universities, and in Washington. If you look hard enough, you might even find it in Trump\u2019s White House.<\/p>\n

Face it: America has a Shkreli problem.<\/p>\n

Martin Shkleri will spend the next seven years of his life in prison. But what will happen to the other unbridled narcissists now in positions of power in America, who also blatantly defy the common good?<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Robert B. Reich, Chancellor\u2019s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers \u201c<\/em>Aftershock” and \u201c<\/em>The Work of Nations.” His latest, “<\/em>Beyond Outrage,” is now out in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 robertreich.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

9 Mar 2018 – Martin Shkreli was sentenced today to seven years in prison. The Shkreli personality disorder can be found on Wall Street, in the executive suites of America\u2019s largest corporations, in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, in our prestigious universities, and in Washington, even in Trump\u2019s White House. Face it: America has a Shkreli problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":64336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}