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| Annie Lamont |
There are, and always will be, unanswered questions in
politics – for several reasons. The questions may not have matured yet;
problems may not yet be seen as problematic. These can be safely put off to
another day.
Oleaginous politicians, usually after consulting with their
lawyers, may be unwilling to answer pressing questions. A direct answer to a
question is always fraught with danger, and many politicians – former President
Donald Trump being a conspicuous exception – are danger averse, which is why
they often yield to the temptation to straddle both sides of the same issue.
This unnerving straddling occurs most often among politicians who wish to haul
into their voting blocs both those who say the earth is flat and those who
subscribe to the not-flat theory.
Some of the above elements may be glimpsed in what may
become the sleeper issue of Connecticut’s upcoming elections.
Annie Lamont, a much praised venture capitalist, is a
founding partner of Oak HC/FT, “a well-regarded healthcare venture capital firm
that invested millions of dollars in the startup,” Sema4. CTMirror
offers the following qualification, “even though Annie Lamont said she had
no role in procuring Sema4’s contracts with the state, and no formal ethical
lines were breached, her company expanded its investment in Sema4 as the
startup’s COVID-testing work for the state of Connecticut grew.”
We surmise that “no formal ethical lines were breached”
because Connecticut's Office Of State Ethics gave the
Lamonts a green light on ethical improprieties. Precautions were taken. When
Sema4 signed its first contract with the state to conduct COVID testing, a
lawyer with the governor’s office told state ethics officials in an email that
the couple wished to donate "any benefit that they may derive from the
contract to charity.”
Sema4 has been exceedingly profitable, and such profits
could not have been realized without the active financial investments of the
state of Connecticut. The state began to invest in Sema4 during the
administration of former Democrat Governor Dannel Malloy, much before
Coronavirus raised its horned head in Connecticut. Sema4 was a profitable
Connecticut start-up company because the right people, two Connecticut
governors whose arms were loaded with tax money, plowed so called “investments”
into the start up. We do not know how many of the friends and associates crowding
the thrones of the two governors profited – charitably, of course -- from the deal.
Is there a mackerel in moonlight stinking up the Connecticut
political compound, crowded for the last few gubernatorial terms with
Democrats? Possibly.
Turn over many perfectly legal, ethically dubious
political/business transactions and you will find, a swarm of lawyers and
political facilitators whose business it is to transmute ethically dubious
actions into a sweet sounding bedtime lullaby for the general run of voters who
are much too busy, those of them working during the Lamont business shutdown,
to pay much attention to the ethical proprieties of politicians.
The reaction of Peter Lewandowski, the executive director of
the Office of State Ethics (emphasis mine), to possible
ethical improprieties is hilarious. “Speaking generally and not about the
Lamonts,” CTMirror tells us, Lewandowski “said compliance with the law is not
necessarily the standard that the public will apply. ‘In some ways, it’s left
to the public official’s discretion on how much tolerance they have for bad
optics,’ Lewandowski said.”
Ah well, the winter is upon us, and with it yet another
strain of Coronavirus, about which not much is known at the moment. Dr. Fauci,
the nation’s medical expert, is just now beginning to huff and puff over the
South African omicron variant.
The very good news is that heroic Big Pharma engineers have
produced at least three separate treatments for Coronavirus that will, if
widely distributed to hospitals and nursing homes, reduce the death rate from
Coronavirus to near zero.
One wonders whether local Coronavirus slayers such as the
Lamonts are even now preparing to make available such miracle drugs to
Connecticut residents suffering from comorbidity medical complications.
A Merck drug, molnupiravir, “has already been granted
conditional authorization in the United Kingdom. Merck’s studies have shown the
drug reduced hospitalizations and deaths by 50%,” according to a piece that
appeared recently in the Courant.
“The second drug, paxlovid, is from Pfizer, and the company’s data indicates
that it reduced the risk of hospitalization and death from severe COVID-19 in
adults by 89%. These results are being independently reviewed …The drugs would
be recommended as oral therapy for outpatients with COVID-19, who are either
more severely ill or who have existing health conditions that put them at
greater risk of hospitalization or death.”
Both drugs require rapid antigen testing. It is unclear
whether the new drugs will benefit Sema4 and its investors.
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