Author: condor

A Tangent, From Our Other Properties: Merck Ready To Complete Its “Move Back Home” — To Rahway, New Jersey — And The Original HQ (For Nearly 75 Years)…

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When “Fast” Fred Hassan was running legacy Schering-Plough (circa 2004-2006), the company spent lavishly on a gleaming HQ in Kenilworth. Then came the Vytorin® debacle we reprised, below. Merck had to bail its partner Schering out, and merged into it — renaming the final entity Merck again (for what turned out to be ineffectual J&J Remicade® distribution rights / arbitration moves). So, Hassan was out, and Merck held three very large HQ “white elephant” properties in New Jersey, by late 2010. [And to be sure, Hassan’s Kenilworth palace was the least marketable — and most over priced — of these assets. So surviving Merck moved in, figuring it could more easily sell the others, as mixed use HQ/science facilities.]

Indeed, at one point in 2016-17, Google was a rumored potential buyer of the gorgeous Whitehouse Station campus. But that fell through.

Here over 13 years later, it seems Merck finally has a buyer for Hassan’s Kenilworth palace. And so, Merck has returned to the place George Merck picked out, in the then woods near Rahway, New Jersey about three-quarters of a century ago. All the old buildings have been plussed up, to be sure — but it has. . . returned to “Dad’s” (sorta’ On Walden Pond)… home.

And that, it strikes me, is fitting. Here’s that Saturday “slow news day” story — from FirecePharma, sounding more like a local outlet:

…Three years after Merck & Co. unveiled a headquarters pivot back to its old stomping grounds in Rahway, New Jersey, the company is bidding goodbye to its previous Garden State home base.

Merck has reached a deal with real estate business Onyx Equities to sell its 108-acre campus in Kenilworth, New Jersey, where the drug behemoth relocated its main digs back in 2015. For 23 years before that, Merck was based in nearby Whitehouse Station….

[All as] Merck [departs] Kenilworth in phases. . . [as it now] completes an expansion at its [newly renovated] headquarters in Rahway, the company explained in a release….

Of course, each of these three recent moves had rather significant effects on the local public schools — and so on, since the tax base either shot upward, or dropped off a cliff — as Merck arrived, in full… or decamped. In addition, local lunch spots, gas stations and the like will either proliferate or… die out. Onward, smiling — but now you know.

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Hinderaker — Ever An Entitled Whiner — Thinks Utilities Are Here To Serve… Only HIS Energy Hogging Predelictions…

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Once again tonight, likely shilling for his oil and gas donors (at his hard right 501(c)(3) “think” tank), Hinderaker intentionally misstates what utilities are, and why they exist.

As my graphic at right indicates… there are some goods and services that cannot be provided with a profit motive, without deeply injuring (freezing them in the winter, or baking them in the summer — for inability to afford electricity to heat or cool their apartments) those of us with the most limited means. These goods (like health care services) literally make the difference between life and death.

And they are not consumed in predictable enough regularity that one can budget accurately in advance — for peak demand (or slack supply). Moreover, they are wildly capital intensive.

So, as a nation, we decided over a century ago to set up what amounts to a mutual insurance company: a not-for-profit operation, that would be underwritten by all of us… and would charge each of us only the actual direct cost of a given number of kW/hrs. In that way, we would be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers — to keep homes heated… and cooled. We would all agree to do what’s best for our children — and theirs.

But John inverts this whole notion, complaining that he is being asked — very politely, to be sure… to try to be efficient in his use of this public good — for the betterment of all of us.

He feels the utility exists primarily to give him (personally!) everything he wants — whenever he wants — and however he wants it. In sum, he feels that since he can buy ALL the electric power he’d ever want, and more — the utility is duty bound to think of him first (and perhaps even last, and always). What an… idiotic ass.

At bottom, what he truly hates… is any US system (voluntary or semi-mandatory) that might put the good of the many… in any manner ahead of what he personally feels he’s entitled to demand — by throwing his cash at it. [Idea: why doesn’t he just build his own solar grid, and waste all the electricity he wants — by investing perhaps $1.5 million, to have way more juice than he could possibly use? Then he could ignore all us little people out here, willing to pitch in and help one another.]

Yes… he hates cooperatives — and yes… communal benefit organizations.

Me? I think it ironic. And… I think he ought to shut up. These very “communal benefits transfers” (whyte privileges) are the reasons he was able to go to college and law school — and the way he avoided the draft in Vietnam, by staying in higher education institutions until we pulled out in 1974. Yep — thus again, a communal benefit (one that the poor kids he grew up with in the Dakotas…) transferred to him, by fighting, bleeding and dying in the sweltering jungle… while he occupied a Deans office in protests against the very benefit they died to pass on to him.

What a shameless, feckless… ass he is, indeed. Just shut up, you old man.

Damn.

Friday Trivia: Steve H. Runs A Pie Chart Showing Most Oppose “Resurrecting” Extinct Species, A La Jurassic Park…

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On one of our other properties, we’ve previously mentioned this possibility: using CRISPR and other DNA tech, to “bring back” the wooly mammoth (yes there is a more than passing resemblance there). And yes, we are likely able right now to do some version of this, in real life. Not science fiction: science fact. [Over $15 million has been raised by a start up that intends (it says) to “do the thing” — let’s hope… not.]

Indeed, as Ian Malcolm (wisely) intoned, “just because you can do something… doesn’t mean you should do it….” [Doubly so, without ever even a serious thought — about the evolutionary science involved here. These mammoths were selected for extinction… for a reason. We literally do not know what long extinct bacterial or viral agents might have died with them — ones that might well affect us modern, relatively sanitized humans more dramatically than say ebola (and be far more contagious, to boot — airborne, on the winds!) — for just one (horrifying) example. We do not have Neanderthal immune systems, afterall.]

So yeh — it’s a bad idea, Steve — especially since no one can articulate any form of credible, actual need, for a mammoth, from a biological diversity standpoint.

But I digress, from my punchline — such as it is.

You see, elsewhere this week we read of a sort of “junk-science” assertion that perhaps a species of about three foot tall proto-humanoid, called H. floresiensis might still be hiding in the jungles of Indonesia… living in very small groups, out of sight of the modern world.

Personally, I doubt it. But never say never, right?

In any event, these would be lil’ hobbits… might only resemble… Powerliners, in intellectual capacity.

So… very lil’ need to use CRISPR — we might just study the oddly misshapen habits, and craniums of these three proto-hominids, depicted above.

That’s it — I’m out.

Now Scott Johnson — The Curlishly Malevolent Moron… Calls Out Don Lemon, Too — Hilarious!

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It is only a mere moment away, on a slow news Friday, before Hayward joins these two in preciously “tsk-tsking” — that a gay black man might suggest that Ex-Gov. Haley is “past prime-time” (to the political goals of this far-right dominated GOP) AS A POLITICAL candidate — in any White House GOP nomination scenario, because she is WAY TOO far left of where her “party” now stands… post the lunatics’ takeover engineered mostly by Tangerine, but to a significant degree, with these guys’ explicit help and backing.

The GOP is nearly a fascists’ playground now — and she was the center… before. Now, she is a far left as one can get, and still say the word “Republican” — as a membership badge.

That is what Lemon meant, no doubt. Even so, he promptly and sincerely apologized if anyone misunderstood him to be speaking of her physical appearances, or her… age (wilfully misconstruing the word used — “prime” — to mean beyond child-bearing age). That is not what the remark meant, in context — but these guys are now the self-appointed, would-be GOP social justice warriors’ outrage crew.

As I say… that’s precious.

Over the weekend, Hinderaker explicitly called her a “plaything” — “fun“, for the GOP. In context, too (if we are to let Johnson and Hinderaker attack Lemon on the spurious basis they have, then “what’s good for the goose, is good for the gander, too…” here, John!).

The brand that was Powerline… lost the last shred of its legitimacy, when Hayward simply executed Mirengoff last year, under the cover of night — but in public. He just took him out in the square, and shot him — for (gasp!) disagreeing with Hayward’s take on a particularly inane matter. Like whether a remark was… misunderstood. [It might mean that Hayward has put most of the cash into keeping Powerline running these last years, now that he is the one primarily shilling for donations, for a complete site revamp… but that’s speculation for another day.]

Yes, Hayward sent Mr. Paul Mirengoff (his writing partner — of over 20 years!) to the gulag of eternal internal exile… for expressing a dissenters’ view — politely so.

Yeh — these decidedly mediocre, self-unaware, embittered old whyte farts are hilarious, if nothing else.

And… increasingly, they are… nothing else.

Hinderaker Is Now Just That Old Guy Who Yells At The Kids (At NPR)… To “Stay Off His Lawn”.

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John, apparently lacking a day job, wrote no fewer than 15 emails, most more than three pages in length when printed out… to various people at Minnesota NPR, to complain that his Center for the American Experiment (a 501(c)(3)) doesn’t — as far as he knows (he says!) receive money directly from the Koch family.

He impotently continues to threaten he will write more about it, on his silly Powerline blog, the regular readership of which is about 1/150th of what it was when he broke the Dan Rather story in the early 2000s (the one he, in his self-inflated sensibilities… dubbed “Rathergate“). It is clearly hard for him — now that his “fifteen minutes” were over more than… two decades ago.

“Yeah, Pop-pop, I’ll get my bike off your dumb lawn now.”

Cheers.

Irony Meter: Pegged Off, Scale High. Hilarious Hinderaker!

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Tonight John excoriates Don Lemon of CNN, for a comment about Nikki Haley — that as a politician she is past her prime. Of course he meant that her relevance is waning in the GOP, because of its hard right / near fascists’ lurch. [Hinderaker being one of the fan boys of this development.] Everyone knows Haley is as close to a centrist as one will find in today’s GOP. Sure, Lemon could be misunderstood as having made an ageist, and appearances-based reference — and for that he apologized.

That he didn’t say it personally to ex-Gov. Haley put John’s undies in a bunch.

Well. That. Is. Rich. Delicious, even.

Just a few nights ago (as we noted), John Hinderaker hisself dismissed her possible seeking of the GOP nomination (out of hand) by saying essentially the only thing she had going for her, was that it would be “fun” to watch “liberal tears” — if there was a GOP woman president of color (though he used the term non-whyte, so as to point up what he perceives as her “other-ness”, to his readership). His point such as it is, is that she might come before a Democratic woman president was elected. [Obviously, the Democrats won the race on the VP seat here, with a woman of color, coming in first.]

So he directly reduced her run (and her personhood) to her Asian Indian heritage and her gender.

But he thinks Lemon a cad (for the splinter in his eye here) — while not even acknowledging the lumber in his own.

Charming. [He also made fun of people who voted for PA Rep. Fetterman, since Mr. Fetterman made a very courageous decision — to get medical help today — while John doesn’t mention that his opponent was openly… a whyte supremacist.

Me? I suspect all the people who voted Fetterman did so on… principle. What a malevolent idiot John is.]

Out.

A Decades-Old Glenmark / Merck / Legacy Schering-Plough “Pay To Delay” Generic Zetia® Antitrust Case In USDC In Virginia May FINALLY Go To Trial April 17, 2023.

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Ahem. That last post (on cats) was a throw-away. Simply inane nonsense. I apologize.

So in Lenten penance, let me offer something of substance this time. This is how big pharma achieved, 2002-2018, essentially the same outcome as Martin — but by using a far more polite means (and at least arguably lawful agreements, to paper it up). Martin learned this craft / graft by watching Fred Hassan, and maybe not even from the distance most assume.

But Martin was… different. He dispensed with all pretense of making “orderly transitions” — for a generic Daraprim®, to be able come to BACK ON the US markets (it had been generic for years, already, before he bought the exclusive rights to its API). No, then he simply… throttled all would-be comers, with an unlawful Iron Fist. That’s what the FTC proved, at trial in January of last year.

So, in sum, far beyond what happened in the Zetia® scenario below.

In fact, another blog of mine was born out of what I regarded as chicanery by then CEO Fred Hassan, at legacy Schering-Plough — which long ago was crushed out of existence by its 50/50 partner in what were the cholesterol management franchise businesses — a company called. . . Merck.

Way back then (2007-2009), I followed their wildly-byzantine moves to keep the juggernauts Vytorin® and Zetia® streaming billions and billions in sales… despite evidence that, as a fine Yale cardiologist (one Dr. Harlan Krumholz) so memorably put it at ACCA in Spring 2008… they were simply… “very expensive placebos.”

So then sales nose-dived. And generics, including Glenmark (the first authorized generic) hit the US market, after a deal which delayed entry by over five years. Here about 14 years later, a US Court will finally take a look at whether the agreement to delay entry was a violation of the Sherman and Clayton Acts (that’s a link to the thoughtful court opinion setting it for trial). [So Martin Shkreli’s Daraprim® gambit may not have been not so unique after all — just more… brazen. There is credible evidence that Hassan… “taught” Shkreli… the “graft / craft“, of it, as well. But Martin was far more Brooklyn / street thug “in your face” about it, to be certain — all though with essentially the same cha-cha, as the below.]

So here is the latest from FiercePharma reporting:

…Thirteen years after the fact, a copycat accord with Glenmark Pharmaceuticals has come back to haunt Merck & Co. And now, the alleged pay-for-delay collaborators must face a jury trial.

Late last week, a Virginia federal judge scrapped Merck and Glenmark’s bid for summary judgment in the five-year-old case, which claims the drugmakers leveraged a 2010 settlement to stifle generics of Merck’s former cholesterol blockbuster Zetia.

Drug purchasers, payers and retailers filed their original suit in 2018 and amended the case the following year. The plaintiffs allege Merck paid Glenmark around $800 million in an “unlawful reverse-payment” to delay the launch of its Zetia copycat — which was the first generic to hit the market back in Dec. 2016 — for nearly five years….

[A USDC Magistrate, Douglas Miller, in his September 2022] report urg[ed] the federal the judge overseeing the case, Judge Rebecca Beach Smith, to put the case to a jury. He argued there were multiple issues at play surrounding the companies’ 2010 settlement, including the deal’s value and whether the pact included an anticompetitive angle….

Really mostly just a clean up, from my coverage of the early 2000s — yep, so now… getting on 15 years ago… where did the time… go? Smile. [To be sure, Martin’s facts are far worse than these above.]

नमस्ते

Hinderaker… Cannot STAND That The US No Longer Will Force Whyte Western Ideas Down Local Middle Easterners’ Throats…

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Our US Chargé d’Affaires in Kabul (a woman) rang in this week with a fun shout-out to Beyoncé (with the goal of empowering young women there, in Afghanistan). Predictably, Hinderaker… blew a gasket (as he often does — when Mrs. Carter’s name… comes up, in the sauce).

In the “old world” — the one he impotently wants back, we would have insisted on whyte, western patrician formalities in all we did in such a foreign land, from our embassies. In sum, John’s used to it being done the “old Dartmouth; and old Harvard” ways.

That time definitively winked out of existence about 30 years ago — but John missed it all, the passing of that guard — since he was still in the lost thrall of what he mis-remembered… as… Reaganism. [And in truth, John never articulates why Beyoncé bothers him so — I think he just hates that she is all the things he is not — and can never again be.]

So it is indeed a rude awakening for him to find out that black billionaires can teach Afghani girls… much — much about knowing ones’ worth, of seeking to rise — and of choosing not to live under the thumb of any particular man who doesn’t respect them.

Old, embittered and senile Hinderaker: let us watch, and laugh — as he and his fellow dinosaurs… are shown the gate, to eternity. [In a footnote — and, in passing here, I’ll note that he praises a Manhattan USDC decision tonight that struck down what might be construed as a hateful speech code attempted in New York, as violative of the First Amendment. John agrees with the reasoning; and there, it was a government actor.

What he fails to recognize is that it is exactly this same line of cases that nullifies Hinderaker’s express desire (he even tried to write a FL statute on it!) for similar government rules (i.e., a complaint mechanism, and specific written findings, before banning, or “uninviting”… someone, on the virtual private clubs of Twitter, Instagram or Facebook)… is DOA. In language he expressly endorses tonight, he admits that the government has no role here. Hilarious.]

Out.

So A Former Dean Of Stanford’s Law School, And A Current Senior Research Fellow, At The University… Are Sureties For Sam Bankman-Fried’s $250 Million Release Bond. Wow.

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I am still writing a more fulsome story — but want to get this out, post haste. Stanford’s paws are all over this — his dad; his mom — and now the former dean of the law school, and a very wealthy patent holder who does research at Stanford, as well. Yikes.

Of course, SBF is still presumed innocent — until trial… but the documentation in the bankruptcy court… well, it is very… alarming. I wonder whether these two knew all that — when they agreed to sign on.

The able USDC Judge Lewis Kaplan (here at lunchtime) just released their names, since there was no stay filed with the appeal, to the Second Circuit. It is curious that the two only signed unsecured IOUs (at $200K and $500K, respectively), and thus only for a total of $700,000 if he rabbits (but the forfeiture would be $250 million, as against SBF personally). Do though consider that the parents’ home would be seized (but it sits on land leased from… yep, The Leland Stanford University, too):

…On January 30, 2023, the Court issued an order granting the motions of several news organizations to unseal the names of defendant’s non-parental bail sureties. (Dkt 57) Given the novelty of the question presented and the likelihood of appeal, the Court stayed the order “until 5 p.m. on February 7, 2023 and, if a notice of appeal from th[at] order [was] filed by then, until February 14, 2023 at 5 p.m. in order to permit an application for a further stay to be made to the Court of Appeals should any adversely affected party wish to file one.” (Dkt 57, at 12.)

On February 7, 2023, Defendant timely filed a notice of appeal from the January 30, 2023 Order.

As of today, however, no application for a further stay has been made to the Court of Appeals.

Accordingly, the Clerk shall file on the unrestricted public record complete copies of the redacted bonds previously docketed as Dkt 55 and 56.

SO ORDERED. (Signed by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan on 2/15/2023)….

I am sure the WSJ — or… someone… is running down who these guys have donated the most political money to…. But this is going to give Stanford a bit of a black eye (just in view of the evidence so far), no matter what — from here on. Stay tuned.

नमस्ते

Marburg — Or Ebola — Equally Worrying Confirmations, From WHO — Guinea Is Suffering An Outbreak.

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We did mention over the weekend that this flare-up, the one which caused the closure of the border to crossing to Cameroon in northern Guinea… might turn out to be Marburg’s — not Ebola. That is in fact the case (though this is the first known outbreak of Marburg — inside Equatorial Guinea’s borders).

The WHO has now confirmed that at least 16 active cases are being monitored, and nine deaths seem to have been Marburg-related. Indeed, one additional challenge will be that while there are promising Marburg vaccine candidates undergoing early testing (Phase I), it may take a minute… to get the vaccine stock down to Guinea, and start an experimental in-situ ring vaccine program — for contacts of contacts. It is every bit as lethal as Ebola to be certain, so this is cause for real concern.

Here’s the latest, from WHO:

…Equatorial Guinea today confirmed its first-ever outbreak of Marburg virus disease. Preliminary tests carried out following the deaths of at least nine people in the country’s eastern Kie Ntem Province turned out positive on one of the samples for the viral haemorrhagic fever….

Equatorial Guinean health authorities sent samples to the Institut Pasteur reference laboratory in Senegal with support from World Health Organization (WHO) to determine the cause of the disease after an alert by a district health official on 7 February. Of the eight samples tested at Institut Pasteur, one turned out positive for the virus. So far nine deaths and 16 suspected cases with symptoms including fever, fatigue and blood-stained vomit and diarrhoea have been reported….

We need to have this vaccine readied, replicated and vetted, STAT (it was not developed at any for profit pharma concern, but a government affiliated institute) — for just as we saw with the last Ebola outbreak in Uganda, in late 2022… the chances are good that at least one exposed contact of a contact… could easily end up on a plane out of Guinea. . . or may have already left the country… for parts unknown. Public health efforts again will need to be well coordinated, and swift here.

[Onward, still expecting that local Margate (UK) authorities will place the freezer back on the property, as soon as they weld the lid open, so no one may be trapped inside — no public danger.]

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