Calling A Spade

EVERYONE WHO KNOWS ME know how much I despise Donald Trump. But if they know me well, they also know that I have a fundamental sense of fairness, and that I do not despise anybody merely for the sake of emotional gratification. On inauguration day, I promised to give him a chance. And, I have. Amid all his corruption and insanity, the president appears to have done something so wonderful that I cannot refrain from openly embracing it and showering the president with credit for it. He proposes to henceforth require all pharmaceutical concerns, in the course of their television commercials, to articulate the actual price of their product, amid the usual avalanche of described benefits and possible side effects. Presumably this will be enacted through a regulation issued by the Food and Drug Administration. If you aren't ashamed of your prices, advertise them on television, along with all your other propaganda and information. We on the big government regulatory left seriously need to congratulate and support the president on this one. The pharmaceutical cartel, aka known as the American pharmaceutical industry, is outraged, and planning to challenge the new regulation in court, vigorously, as one would expect. They say that they will not comply with the requirement that they reveal prices on television, because it would be impossible to do so and to explain it to the viewers. Instead, they will direct viewers to a website, which, presumably, will explain everything. This means hammering the viewers with a massive propaganda message explaining why drug prices absolutely must, for the benefit of society, be high. This is exactly the sort of regulation, the exact sort of government economic intervention, needed in American prosperity; holding corporations accountable does nothing to harm the economy, it does everything to make corporate capitalism more moral, more compassionate, and more equatable, if that's possible. It is socialism, at its finest. Whether the trump administration realizes or understands this does not matter as much as whether we the american people do. Wouldn't it be great if Donald Trump and his cult like supporters suddenly started advocating for and pursuing good policies like this one, instead of the steady, daily flow of lunacy we have had thus far in the Trump era? These drug commercials always entice the viewer by promises of vastly improved health, while down playing all the associated side effects and problems, including cost. Its time to force them to be honest, upfront, accountable, and amazingly, Trump seems to be trying to do it. But if corporate power in America is ever going to be replaced by the power of the people, we the people must see to it, rather than relying on some billionaire demagogue and his adoring, criminally insane sycophants.