CT Blue

I ran across this article on my RSS reader today, and it brings to mind something that really should be foremost in our minds: the multitudinous ways in which the present Administration, aided and abetted by the entire Republican Party, has perverted our government. The truly depressing thing is that not only does this abuse provoke no surprise, but it gets almost no attention from our mainstream press, which chooses not to cover such things in depth, or harp on them as they would were the genius a Democrat, since they are, in essence, only to be expected from this corrupt administration:

Public Citizen today filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to compel disclosure of coronavirus vaccine development and manufacturing contracts with major pharmaceutical corporations worth billions of dollars.

The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, challenges HHS’s withholding of records requested by Public Citizen under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) related to Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s initiative to accelerate the development of COVID-19 treatments and vaccines.

Operation Warp Speed, which is co-led by HHS, has given more than $10 billion to pharmaceutical corporations. The terms of these contracts remain secret. Public Citizen first requested Operation Warp Speed’s contracts with AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer and Regeneron, among others, in May 2020. The contracts could shed light on critical questions like:

Will pharmaceutical corporations be required to set a reasonable price for their products, or will they be free to profiteer despite the public’s massive investment?
Will taxpayer-funded technology be held as corporate secrets, or can the U.S. government share technology with the World Health Organization to advance scientific research, accelerate manufacturing and more quickly end the global pandemic?
What rights does the U.S. government maintain in the factories it is helping build?

Here’s an easy prediction to make: these medicines, should they ever come to fruition, will be sold at the price set by their makers without any limitations or any obligation to even repay the federal investment. We, the taxpayers, will end up paying twice for a vaccine which should be free. The point of government from the Republican point of view, after all, is to pump money up to the rich.

Somewhere, perhaps, there is a person who has been diligently documenting the atrocities committed by this administration. If we manage to rid ourselves of the budding dictator, he or she may gift what will surely be a thousands page tome to the nation. It could, perhaps, serve as a source for the commission that should be set up to prosecute each and every criminal currently working for this administration, along with the crime boss himself.

Update: McSweeney’s has started on the job.