Doubters about the need for government regulation regarding drug distribution need look no further than the statement from the associate general counsel at Cardinal Health, one of the country's biggest drug distribution companies ("Opioid exec denies obligation to public," July 25). When asked whether her company aims to "ensure that it does what it can to prevent the public from harm," she answered, "I don't know that Cardinal owes a duty to the public regarding that."
There is nothing evil about the person or the company behind this statement, which is a refreshingly candid reflection of the fact that the free-enterprise ideal of capitalism provides absolutely no motivation to serve the public good or constraint against doing harm. Profit is the sole currency of our economy. Any protection of our bodies, our health, our privacy, our identities, or our environment must come from an entity that puts people first: our government.
The Cardinal Health counsel confirmed that the company must conform to "the law, the statute, regulations and guidance." As the current administration continues to shed one regulation after another in a flurry of indulgence to big business, it abdicates its responsibility to safeguard the citizens it supposedly serves and further dissolves the now-threadbare fabric separating us from many different kinds of disaster.
Jeff Naylor, Minneapolis
MUELLER'S TESTIMONY
Same hearing, opposite conclusions
I marvel that a July 26 letter writer from Sleepy Eye, Minn., could look behind Oz's curtain and see a sad, halting, confused Robert Mueller, the great Democratic hope, answering questions about a biased report, written by a biased team on an investigation into election interference that should never have happened. And I, a guy from Minneapolis, see an investigation conducted by a well-respected prosecutor and long-standing public servant, issuing dire warnings and factual evidence that adversaries are influencing our elections, an investigation that has at the very least resulted in a number of indictments and felony convictions for some of the president's closest advisers and exposed the president's active resistance to leading us against this interference. How can we be so far apart?
The president gave us that answer before he was ever elected: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters."
We all must keep taking a hard look behind that curtain, because it's not Mueller who's back there.
Jeffrey Wells, Minneapolis
• • •
By declaring, in reference to the Mueller report, that "thankfully this sad chapter in U.S. history is over," a July 26 letter writer misses an essential point. The integrity of our country's elections (perhaps local as well as national) is under attack by Russia and potentially other foreign powers. When taking office, U.S. senators and representatives swear to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The Constitution, in turn, establishes that members of the House and Senate are to be chosen by the people of the states.
By not allowing a vote on election security bills to come before the Senate, I believe Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is failing to live up to his oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, especially foreign ones. Republicans and others who want to just put the Mueller report behind us, claiming "it's over," are ignoring a duty to hear and act upon what Mueller said. Notably, compared with the billions and billions of dollars we spend on military hardware, the House proposal to provide hundreds of millions to the states to shore up our defenses and employ backup paper ballots in elections is quite modest and urgently deserves Senate passage. It is likely that the attack on America is just beginning. We dare not proceed poorly armed.
