Big Pharma’s Ads

Up until the ‘90s television drug ads were almost nonexistent, now there’s no escaping them.

Somewhere along the line a few conservatives started to confuse being pro-business with being pro-free enterprise. One relies on government favors and ‘regulatory capture’ and the other on laissez-faire.

They couldn’t be more different.

You might be for a big defense budget, for instance, but Pentagon appropriations have little to do with the market. Defense contractors are beneficiaries of a very large government program, necessary at times and profligate at others.

Likewise, big tech merchants enjoyed a government intervention of a different sort: a massive sales tax break for their customers who made online purchases instead of shopping at the Mom and Pop on Main Street. At least until it was finally rescinded by the Supreme Court.¹

This is the difference between capitalism and corporatism.

So the horror on the faces of K Street lobbyists as they prepare for what Donald Trump’s new pal Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has in store for them should be taken with a grain of salt.

To be sure, the environmental crusader can go too far at times and the President-elect has already put oil and gas wisely off limits because the engine that drives our entire economy is still energy.

But the Kennedy scion’s skepticism towards the favors granted to Big Pharma and Big Food should be embraced by conservatives. For example, just how is removing junk food’s eligibility for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) purchases an affront to anyone but General Mills and its shameless ‘anti-food shaming’ campaign?²