One thing that I’ve found striking is that, although there have probably been numerous deaths by gunshot in New York over the last few weeks, exactly one is all over the news. Indeed, it was the lead story on NBC Nightly News tonight, beating out Assad’s overthrow in Syria which came in second. And it’s not just the corporate media: although PBS News Hour had Syria as the lead story, apprehending the likely killer got second place with about ten minutes of air time.
What’s so special about this particular murder? The only thing that I can see is that the victim was one of the oligarchs.
i would *really* think they’d be trying to make us forget this one. the more we think about, the more of us will think it looks like a good idea to copycat.
Although I agree completely that for-profit health insurance companies qualify as “death panels”, and that the death of the particular person in question is no great loss to humanity, I’m not able to step over the line and actually celebrate murder.
(I don’t see myself as a “saint” as you suggest in the final paragraph of this post.)
if not a saint, saint-adjacent, u beautiful soul
Given how many claims the company lead by the deceased denied, said ex-CEO almost certainly has blood on his hands, even though he did not personally kill people directly.
So I’m reminded of the quote from Voltaire’s Candide:
“The only thing that I can see is that the victim was one of the oligarchs.”
A lowly CEO with a $10M salary is hardly an ‘oligarch’.
(Please look up the term before bandying it about)
[Now Musk, he’s well on the way to being an oligarch]
He’d be the first lowly $10m CEO whose sole income was his salary, I suppose.
Maybe I’m too literal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_oligarch
EigenSprocketUK beat me to it: CEOs’ salaries are probably small parts of their incomes. IIUC, they’re more rentiers than anything else; and so the death of one is no great loss to society.
John Morales: yeah, the Wikipedia definition of “business oligarch” sounds like what I was thinking about, especially the bit about controlling politics; and wealthy rentiers do seem to be in control of both Republicans and Democrats at present. They were clearly successful in taking Bernie Sanders out when it became apparent that he was actually a viable candidate for the Democratic nomination.
In 2023 Thompson had a base salary of $1 million and total compensation of $10,221,898, as listed on page 50 of the proxy statement for their 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders at https://www.unitedhealthgroup.com/content/dam/UHG/PDF/investors/2024/2024_proxy_statement_final.pdf