Purdue heir David Sackler and wife Joss depicted in Vanity Fair (8/19)
This week on CounterSpin: The engineers of the crack epidemic were never offered a deal to get out of the biz with impunity as long as they gave some money towards helping the families, communities and healthcare systems broken in the wake of the addiction epidemic they unleashed. Nor were any other neighborhood drug dealers you can think of, caught making money off drugs that, hey, they're also very sorry if anyone used irresponsibly? Somehow that's not the most relevant context for corporate media talking about the bankruptcy ruling shielding the Sackler family, profiteers via Purdue Pharma on the drug Oxycontin, responsible for, conservatively, half a million deaths by overdose. We'll talk about that with Public Citizen research director Rick Claypool.
Also on the show: You've seen the graphic showing how the US minimum wage has become unhinged from other indicators it should connect to, like productivity—the value of the goods and services that, after all, workers produce. But how did that disconnect happen, and how would a true understanding of that help us push through foggy reportage toward a better world? We'll get a breakdown of ideas elite media generally talk over from economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
