Hey look at this

* Nursing Home Inspect https://projects.propublica.org/nursing-homes/ (h/t Nancy Lizza)

“The Littlest Jackal” by nostr:npub1l4052f5la6267hqsxx3jnk7sm2q6ptufuhx7e2k3vw3lccyv7upqujnm43 (1996) https://bruces.medium.com/the-littlest-jackal-by-bruce-sterling-1996-388cbc5cac82

* The First Big #Antitrust Trial of the Century Is About to Start https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-first-big-antitrust-trial-of

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Private equity plunderers want to buy Simon & Schuster: From the same parasites that infected your hospital's emergency room and sucked Toys R Us dry.

https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/110855272853588485

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Going to #Defcon this weekend? I'm giving a keynote, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse," on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

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Today's threads (a thread)

Inside: Private equity plunderers want to buy Simon & Schuster; and more!

Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/08/vampire-capitalism/

#Pluralistic

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Overdrive has a host of predatory practices, loathed by both libraries and publishers (indeed, much of the publishing sector's outrage at library e-lending is really displaced anger at Overdrive). There's a plausible case that the merger of one of the Big Five publishers with the e-lending monopoly will present competition issues every bit as deal-breaking as the PRH/S&S merger posed.

--

Image:

Sefa Tekin/Pexels (modified)

https://www.pexels.com/photo/hand-holding-burning-book-14649992/

eof/

And now KKR has come for Simon & Schuster. The buyout was trumpeted to the press as a done deal, but it's far from a *fait accompli*. Before the deal can close, the #FTC will have to bless it. That blessing is far from a foregone conclusion. KKR also owns #Overdrive, the monopoly supplier of e-lending software to libraries.

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KKR sinks its fangs in every part of the economy, thanks to the vast fortunes it amassed from its investors, ripped off from its customers, and fraudulently obtained from the public purse. After the pandemic, KKR scooped up hundreds of companies at firesale prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/30/medtronic-stole-your-ventilator/#blackstone-kkr

Ironically, the investors in KKR funds are also its victims - especially giant public pension funds, whom KKR has systematically defrauded for years:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/22/stimpank/#kentucky

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94.5% of the #PaycheckProtectionProgram - designed to help small businesses keep their workers payrolled during lockdown - went to giant businesses, fraudulently siphoned off by companies like Longview Power, 40% owned by KKR:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/20/great-danes/#ppp

KKR also helped engineer a loophole in the Trump tax cuts, convincing #JustinMuzinich to carve out taxes for #CCorporations, which let KKR save *billions* in taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/02/broken-windows/#Justin-Muzinich

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KKR took over #DollarGeneral in 2007 and embarked on a nationwide expansion campaign, using abusive preferential distributor contracts and targeting community-owned grocers to trap poor people into buying the most heavily processed, least nutritious, most profitable food available:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

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For KKR, people with disabilities and patients make great victims - disempowered and atomized, unable to fight back. No surprise, then, that so many of KKR's scams target poor people - another group that struggles to get justice when wronged.

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It's not just emergency rooms. KKR bought and looted homes for people with disabilities, slashed wages, cut staff, and then feigned surprise at the deaths, abuse and misery that followed:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/kkr-brightspring-disability-private-equity-abuse

Workers' wages went down to $8/hour, and they were given *36 hour shifts*, and then KKR threatened to have any worker who walked off the job *criminally charged* with patient abandonment:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

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Like any smart vampire, KKR doesn't drain its victim in one go. They find all kinds of ways to stretch out the blood supply. During the pandemic, KKR was front of the line to get massive bailouts for its health-care holdings, even as it fired health-care workers, increasing the workload and decreasing the pay of the survivors of its indiscriminate cuts:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#socialized-losses

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KKR took one of the nation's largest healthcare providers, #Envision, hostage to surprise billing, making it dependent on these fraudulent payments. When Congress finally acted to end this scam, KKR was able to take to the nation's editorial pages and damn Congress for recklessly endangering all the patients who relied on it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

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Heard of the "surprise billing epidemic"? That's where you go to a hospital that's covered by your insurer, only to discover - after the fact - that the #EmergencyRoom is operated by a separate, PE-backed company that charges you thousands for junk fees. KKR and #Blackstone invented this scam, then funneled millions into fighting the #NoSurprisesAct, which more-or-less killed it:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

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They're sometimes called #VultureCapitalists, but they're really #VampireCapitalists:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/private-equity-buyout-kkr-houdaille/

Given a choice, PE companies don't want to prey on sick businesses - they preferentially drain off value from *thriving* ones, preferably ones that we *must* use, which is why PE - and KKR in particular - *loves* to buy health care companies.

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They didn't even bother to clear their former employees' sensitive personnel records out of the unlocked filing cabinets before they scarpered:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/23/exploring-the-ruins-of-a-toys-r-us-discovering-a-trove-of-sensitive-employee-data/

But as flashy as the Toys R Us caper was, it wasn't the worst. Private equity funds specialize in buying up businesses, loading them with debts, paying themselves, and then leaving them to collapse.

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Most spectacularly, they are known for buying and destroying #ToysRUs in a deal that saw them extract $200m from the company, leaving it bankrupt, with lifetime employees getting $0 in severance even as its executives paid themselves tens of millions in "performance bonuses":

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/03/private-equity-bosses-took-200m-out-of-toys-r-us-and-crashed-the-company-lifetime-employees-got-0-in-severance/

The pillaging of Toys R Us isn't the worst thing KKR did, but it was the most brazen. KKR lit a beloved national chain on fire and then walked away, hands in pockets, whistling.

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KKR has a long, long track record of ghastly behavior, and its portfolio currently includes other publishing industry firms, including one rotten monopolist, raising similar concerns to the ones that scuttled the PRH takeover last year:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/books/booksupdate/paramount-simon-and-schuster-kkr-sale.html

Let's review a little of KKR's track record, shall we?

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So while there was no question that a PRH takeover of Simon & Schuster would be bad for writers and readers, it was also clear that S&S - and indeed, all of the Big Five publishers - would be under pressure from the monopolies in their own supply chain. What's more, it was clear that S&S couldn't remain tethered to Paramount, its current owner.

Last week, Paramount announced that it was going to flip S&S to #KKR, one of the world's most notorious #PrivateEquity companies.

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Now the health care system is composed of a series of gigantic, abusive monopolists - pharma, hospitals, medical equipment, pharmacy benefit managers, insurers - and they all conspire to wreck the lives of only two parts of the system who can't fight back: patients and health care workers. Patients pay more for worse care, and medical workers get paid less for worse working conditions.

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