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1. A quick thread on D.C. corruption and coronavirus. A few weeks ago there was a story about a private equity goon named Joel Freedman, who shut down a hospital in Philly for the poor and then tried to extort the city for high rent payments during the coronavirus crisis.
2. Freedman is, not surprisingly, politically connected. He's a National Council Co-Chair for the American Enterprise Institute, the oldest rightwing think tank in D.C. AEI was boosting big business in the 1950s/60s, sponsoring Robert Bork's early research on antitrust.
3. Freedman also has his left connections. In 2016 he received the "Lifetime Achievement Award from the Congressional Black Caucus and National Minority Quality Forum, presented to individuals who have worked in practice and public policy to eliminate healthcare disparities."
4. And finally, there is Harvard Medical School; Freedman is a donor to Harvard's HealthCare Markets and Regulation Lab and a founding member of the Health Care Policy Advisory Council. No corruption story is complete without Harvard! https://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Benefactor_Fall-2016.pdf
5. In reality, Freedman is just a predator, using hospitals as institutions to acquire cash and power. Right now he's planning to build luxury condos on the land where Philly's Hahnemann hospital used to sit.
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