Have you noticed all those sportsbook gambling ads on TV? They are quickly becoming the biggest advertisers at any sporting event. Even Golf! Now these electronic bookies are underwriting mailings and television ads promoting political candidates. It is happening in South Alabama.

When you see a plan that is working, follow it. Big gambling is following the model of Big Pharma. It’s a fairly simple model. Use your sizable profits to acquire more market power with generous advertising budgets. Simultaneously, use those profits to acquire more political power. Then utilize that political power to protect and expand that market power. Notwithstanding President Trump‘s heroic efforts, it is the principal reason that Americans continue to pay more for prescription drugs than any industrialized country in the world.

We are seeing the Pharma formula play out here in deep red South Alabama. A group calling itself The American Conservative Fund is spending heavily to re-elect two local Republican legislators.

Baldwin County is about as safe a place for conservative legislators as there is in the country. Finding multiple slick mailers in our mailbox, one wonders what this is all about. Now we are seeing television ads. The........

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