By Krystal Ball
When I was 27, having never run for office before, I decided to run for Congress. Why did I do it? The short answer is baby bottles. Really. I had this moment of outraged clarity standing in front of a vast array of baby bottles at the Babies-R-Us store, trying to pick the right one for my new baby.
I realized that I had to be hyper-educated just to make sure that I didn’t buy the ones that had toxic BPA in it — a carcinogen that every other developed country had banned. But not us.
Not us. Because some plastics lobby or baby gear maker paid off Congress.
I had a flashback to that moment when I learned that our country had fought and bullied and scrapped to try to keep the World Health Organization from touting the health benefits of breastfeeding.
In fact, a 2016 analysis in the medical journal, the Lancet, concluded that the deaths of 823,000 children and 20,000 mothers each year could be averted through universal breastfeeding, along with economic savings of $300 billion.
There is no debate in the scientific community that if you are able, breast is best. Yet our nation apparently cared more about pleasing the formula and baby-food producers than protecting moms and kids.
It’d be easy to chalk this up to just another Trump outrage, but the truth is, would you be shocked if a Romney or Bush or Cruz administration did the same?
Is this sort of corporate fealty really a departure from standard political operating procedure? I don’t think so.
The corporate takeover of America pre-dates Trump and it will outlast him. This president has revealed the rot of America. He has made it worse. It will take more than ousting him to fix it.
Krystal Ball is the co-host of “Rising,” Hill.TV’s morning news show.
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