Eleanor Kinnaird: Complicit corruption

The endless media commentary about what led to the rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders misses the obvious. An on-point example is a July 31 article about the opioid epidemic that relates how the pharmaceutical industry is making it worse and the role Congress plays.

Even though pharmaceutical companies knew of blatant violations by pharmacies and doctors who wrote thousands of prescriptions for the strongest opioids resulting in the deaths of thousands people, they failed to report it. So what does Congress do about it? Weakens safeguards the pharmaceutical industry objects to.

After massive lobbying by manufacturers, wholesalers and pharmacy chains, the Senate approved it unanimously without even a recorded House vote. This action reflects the frustration of voters – they are outraged that a multibillion-dollar industry can flout the laws even when they know it is harming thousands of people but can do nothing about it because of the influence big business has on our congressional representatives. And that pattern is repeated daily, yearly.

Trump and Sanders (no equality implied here) express the frustration of the impotence of the people (check out the Constitution to see how many times that word appears) to change the complicit corruption of special interests and Congress.

This story was originally published August 24, 2016 at 4:43 PM with the headline "Eleanor Kinnaird: Complicit corruption."