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Email Governor Deval Patrick
Tell the Governor to stop wasting taxpayers' money and it’s time to dump Genzyme’s Henri Termeer!
Dear Gov. Patrick,
With state and household budgets strained to the limit during your administration, there could not have been a worse time to waste taxpayer dollars on corporate welfare that benefits greedy fat cats in the biotech/pharmaceutical industry.
Your appointment of Genzyme Corp. CEO Henri Termeer to your Council of Economic Advisors was also a big mistake. In 2007, Mr. Termeer took home about $36 million in compensation from Genzyme. In that same year, Genzyme board members received $3.7 million or an average of $529,000 each and the company grabbed about $13 million in taxpayer-funded corporate welfare for its Framingham building project, while hypocritically boasting about its $11,000 donation to the local children's Head Start program.
The Framingham project is also an example of Genzyme's policy of using general contractors who hire subcontractors who refuse to employ electricians protected by a union contract -- such as members of IBEW Local 103, who earn area-standard wages and benefits including health coverage. Their worksites are constantly monitored to assure safe working conditions. It would take many years for these well-schooled, hardworking men and women to make what one Genzyme board member takes home in one year for attending a small number of board meetings.
But the worst example of Genzyme's greed is its pricing policies on life-saving medicines that can cost patients two to three hundred thousand dollars a year. This price gouging is unconscionable. It burdens the sick and helps bankrupt our healthcare system.
Before more tax dollars are wasted on Fat Cat Termeer and his peers, tough controls must be imposed on all disbursements of public funds to firms like his that engage in unscrupulous behavior and drive up the cost of health care for everyone.
The State does not need the advice of those like Mr. Termeer to set economic policy for Massachusetts. His mismanagement at Genzyme is costing jobs and jeopardizing the sick. You should rescind his appointment and remove him from your Council of Economic Advisors immediately.
Please let me know how you intend to respond to my concerns.
Sincerely,
(Please CLICK HERE to send above message to Gov. Patrick)
Email Henri Termeer
Tell him to stop freeloading off the Taxpayers
Henri Termeer
Chair, President, & CEO
Genzyme Corporation
500 Kendall St.
Cambridge, MA 02142
Dear Mr. Termeer,
Since you are on Gov. Patrick's Council of Economic Advisors and taxpayers are being asked to provide at least $1 billion through the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to companies such as Genzyme, please answer the following questions:
1. What has been your role and that of other Genzyme executives, representatives and lobbyists in establishing, running and promoting the MLSC as the conduit for taxpayer-financed corporate welfare to highly profitable biotech companies?
2. In light of Genzyme's profits and your compensation packages totaling $58 million in 2006 and 2007, do you think it is fair that Genzyme should receive handouts from local, state and federal governments, particularly when badly needed social services and public sector jobs are being slashed?
3. How do you explain Genzyme soliciting and accepting taxpayer-funded subsidies while paying seven outside board members $3.7 million in 2007? How can you justify paying Richard Syron, disgraced when the government removed him from his $19.8 million-a-year job as head of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. (Freddie Mac), $524,484 for attending 13 Genzyme board meetings? Did union-busting King & Spalding law firm insider Connie Mack deserve $624,669 or MIT professor Dr. Charles Cooney $481,183 for attending a few Genzyme board meetings?
4. How do you respond to accusations, like those of Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine that Genzyme's drug Cerezyme is "perhaps the most extreme example . . . of price gouging" in the industry?
Sincerely,
