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Mar 4Liked by More Perfect Union

How did government allow so much conglomeration companies? I just read that Pfizer bought out the other two companies that make Peniclillin-G. They then made this drug in only one facility resulting in a shortage. Penicillin -G is an antibiotic used against several bacteria and syphilis. Mothers and babies are dying from a treatable disease because kleptocracy has been allowed in. We must vote in representatives who believe in the rule of law, enforcing it, public health, and the common good of the American People,

In 2022, the most recent year for which the CDC has data available, more than 3,700 babies were infected with syphilis, including nearly 300 who were stillborn or died as infants. More than 50% of these cases occurred because, even though the pregnant parent was diagnosed with syphilis, they were never properly treated.

That year, there were 200,000 cases identified in the U.S., a 79% increase from five years before. Infection rates among pregnant people and babies increased by more than 250% in that time; South Dakota, where Strohfus works, had the highest rates — including a more than 400% increase among pregnant women. Statewide, the rate of babies born with the disease, a condition known as congenital syphilis, jumped more than 40-fold in just five years.

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-federal-government-fails-stop-syphilis-babies-pregnancy?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=majorinvestigations&utm_content=feature

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Mar 4·edited Mar 4Author

Hi Linda, Matt Stoller has written an excellent history of how the U.S. legal and policy-making world came to view consolidation as a good thing: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Goliath/Matt-Stoller/9781501182891

As you may know, Stoller also has a fantastic Substack newsletter called Big that tracks these issues closely in real time: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/

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I’m so relieved to see action on this, this merger was literally keeping me up at night

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Thank you, I actually know the history, I just don’t understand how supposedly moral, humanitarian, good, kind, empathetic, compassionate people who are supposed to be protecting the common good decided accepting corporate money was more important than doing their job and stopping this atrocity. Despite all the attention given to their harmful brethren, most E. coli are not harmful to humans, and some are even beneficial. Many of us host a population of E. coli in our gut that aids digestion and protects us from other harmful microbes. It don’t think humans are much different. For decades we have been warned about kleptocracy by a few, growing domestic terrorists, growing theological determinism, growing corruption of our judicial system, the lies by fossel fuel companies who have always known the dangers of global warming, the dangers of monopolies, the dangers of guns now being the #1 cause of deaths in children, the dangers of processed food to humans and the environment, the cruelty , disease promotion, and devastation to land and water from factory farms, the decrease in diversity and impact of humans on the planet which may very well lead to the extinction of our species, I was just wondering if the good people of our species which I still believe are the majority will be able to stop the virulent in our species. This group has become infectious just like e-coli under certain circumstances. I do not believe they will ever be sorry, will ever see any reason to change, will ever care about the common good. They are like an infection or a cancer. They cannot be negotiated with. They are few and we are many, yet they still hold most of the power and the money. This is worse that the first robber barons of the Gilded Age. I am just incredulous as to how our species can be so naive and vulnerable to a few.

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