July 3, 2020: The Doctors Go to Hooters

7/3/20: Sometimes I like to check in with Fox News, just to see what the other side is saying. Today the topic is statues. 

According to Fox, if we let people knock over statues of assorted Confederate generals, slave owners and slaughterers of Native Americans, we won’t be the country Fox viewers love. According to Fox anchor Carley Shimkus, an attractive young blonde, if we allow the statues to be toppled, democracy is doomed. Capitalism is finished. 

Hey? Where’s Ed Henry? 

Oh yeah. He got fired for sexual harassment, joining Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Eric Bolling and James Rosen on the Fox News sidelines.

 

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Round table discussions at Hooters! 

ANYWAY, statues, Ms. Shimkus says, are the real issue and we have to save capitalism. Someone should explain to the Fox News host that slave trading was considered a good business model under the capitalist system. Today, Big Pharma displays the same level of ethics. 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has announced that Novartis, the Swiss drug manufacturer, has admitted to an illegal kickback scheme to boost sales of its fine products. Doctors were treated to meals at the world’s finest restaurants, with “top-shelf alcohol” to wash down viands, to golf outings, and to round-table discussions at less impressive eateries. Such as Hooters. 

Nothing says, “We are here for serious discussion,” like holding a round-table at Hooters. Doctors who pushed enough of Novartis’s drugs could be awarded “honorariums” for speaking at seminars, worth as much as $300,000.

Those prescriptions are going to cost you.

 

According to prosecutors, Novartis spent hundreds of millions over the course of a decade to perpetuate this scheme. It worked well and doctors prescribed billions of dollars’ worth of Novartis drugs, at exorbitant prices. Fraudulent prescriptions were filed with Medicare, Medicaid, and Veterans Affairs. 

After fighting a lawsuit, touched off by a whistleblower complaint, Novartis has agreed to pay a fine of $678 million.

 

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AT FOX NEWS, they’ve been working hard to scare viewers with talk of socialism on the march across America. Team Trump has already started marching. (See, for example, billions in payouts to farmers, to make up for damage done during Trump’s tariff war with China.) Now the federal government is taking a 30% stake in YRC Worldwide, a struggling trucking company. 

In return, “We the People,” will hand over $700 million. YRC Worldwide caught a break because it hauls military equipment for the Department of Defense. That means the company is considered a “critical vendor.” 

Interestingly enough, YRC is also being sued – by the U.S. government – for ripping off taxpayers. 

It’s like “We the People” are suing ourselves.

 

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IN OTHER FOX NEWS, we learned Thursday that Andy Puzder is excited. He says we’re in a “V-shaped” economic recovery. This is exactly what President Donald Trump has been predicting! 

Unfortunately, worrisome signs abound. Macy’s reported this week that it suffered a second quarter loss of $3.58 billion. The company will cut 3,900 corporate and management level positions. General Motors reported a 34% decline in sales. Fiat Chrysler sales slumped 38.6%. McDonald’s announced it will pause a planned reopening for dine-in service. Even more troubling, while the U.S. economy was “adding” millions of jobs in June, in the last weekly reporting period an additional 1.4 million Americans filed for unemployment. That was the fifteenth week in a row with more than a million needing help. In other words: not a V-shaped recovery.

 

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THE CORONAVIRUS continues to sweep the country. For a third day in succession, the number of new cases tops 50,000: 

57,718. 

Those infected this week include Herman Cain, former Republican presidential candidate, last seen at a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Kimberly Guilfoyle, main squeeze of Donald Trump Jr.; and eight members of Vice President Pence’s Secret Service detail. 

In a ripple effect, Greg Gianforte, GOP candidate for governor of Montana, and Kristen Juras, his running mate, are self-quarantining, after Juras and Gianforte’s wife attended a fund-raiser with Guilfoyle.