Happy friggin’ new year

I’d like to say “Happy New Year,” but it’s not looking very good for so many people. “Hope and change” seems to have dissolved into despair and more of the same.

I’ve developed a pretty thick skin, politically speaking, over the years. Idealistic in my youth, as the youth tends to be, I thought our generation (I’m 55) could turn things around. When politician after politician dashed my hopes, I decided it was the system, and things would never change until fundamental changes were made there.

I still believe that. Most of all, we must somehow, as a nation, get the big money out of politics. It is corrupting everything, especially Congress, as the recent health care fiasco so obviously shows. (When over 70% of the nation says it wants a robust public option, for example, you’d think it’d be a slam dunk. But no, the insurance companies that pile on the cash for Lieberman and his ilk get their way, yet again!)

I allowed myself to believe Barack Obama was really going to be different. After all, he wasn’t part of the privileged class, like so many of our presidents have been. He worked hard to make something of himself, then eschewed high-paying lawyer jobs to work for the downtrodden on the streets of Chicago. Surely, I thought, this man could not be so easily corrupted.

But there’s something about holding high office, apparently. Now, he does the bidding of his generals and wages war, as is the American custom. He sits on the sidelines and twiddles his thumbs as the very issue that got him elected gets debated in Congress, seemingly oblivious to the fact that botching it would piss off the majority of people who voted for him. He didn’t even defend the things he campaigned for, like the public option.

He and the super-majority of Democrats we elected compromise before the debate even starts, then compromise some more. Any real bargainer knows you start with something way beyond what you expect to get (in this example, Single Payer), giving you a bargaining tool, in order to end up with something acceptable (like a robust public option). You don’t start with what you really want. Not when you’re negotiating with such a powerful force as Big Money, which is, in the final analysis, the actual opponent.

So, surprise, surprise, we end up with something Big Money (and Big Insurance) is very happy with, but which helps the public very little, if at all. And now we’re set to do it all over again, with bank “reform.” Yeah, right! I can save everyone a lot of time: just ask the banks what they want. They’ll get it anyway.

As I see it, every group fighting for change on any issue ought to all come together and fight for campaign reform. Because until we get the big money out of politics, we’ll keep witnessing the same charade, over and over again.

So, happy friggin’ new year.

Corporate chokehold

Once again, the corporate interests that have a chokehold on our elected representative bodies have succeeded in derailing any real change for the better.

The health care bill is now a bloated corpse – a rotted, stinking shell of what was once originally envisioned. All this thing will succeed in doing is reward the soulless insurance corporations for their intransigence by making them even richer.

The Democrats promised that if we would just give them a 60 seat majority in the Senate, a majority in the House and a Democratic president, they would be able to finally deliver. Instead, the spineless bunch has caved, again, even on abortion rights.

What could have been their greatest moment, when they finally stood up for the people against the big-moneyed interests, has instead disintegrated into the predictable mind-numbing process we helplessly witnessed this summer and fall: Just another giveaway to the mega-corps running the country.

The big mistake, of course, was compromising right off the bat, then compromising some more, then some more, ad nauseam... all in a futile attempt to come up with some kind of “bipartisan” bill, so that the Dems could say they are “mainstream.”

Rather than take Single Payer off the table at the start, they should have used it as their bargaining position. Then, perhaps, we might have been able to at least get a real, robust public option.

Personally, I think Single Payer is the way to go. The rest of the democratic industrialized world runs its variations of it quite successfully, and we even run one already ourselves – in the form of Medicare for seniors. It’s true that when this process started, it didn’t seem could pass such a bill, being that our legislature is what it is. Still, as any negotiator knows, you don’t start out giving away the store.

But there is still a Single Payer bill alive, HR 676; and a California bill, SB 810. Now that the public option plan has become a Frankensteinian monstrosity, it’s what we ought to fight for. Thousands of doctors and nurses nationwide back it. Let’s dump the bloated giveaway bill, and go for the gold.


P.S. It’s that time again! This holiday season, give a unique, thoughtful gift, one that keeps giving all year long – the Humor Times!

Drop the toxic health care bill, implement the simple solution

The health care bill has been thoroughly polluted with a stifling complexity, a result of all the haggling and trying to please all sides. The best solution is the simplest one, the one that has worked well for decades in every other industrialized democracy in the world (in various forms): single payer. In fact, it has even worked just fine here, in the form of Medicare for seniors. What we need is Medicare for All.

I firmly believe it is immoral to deny health care to anyone, and that's what our system does on a consistent basis. It denies care to those who can't afford insurance, the cost of which has risen astronomically in recent years, as have insurance company profits; and said insurance companies regularly deny health care to even those who have been paying into their greed-lined coffers. They deny for 'pre-existing conditions,' or because they don't like a procedure the doctor orders, or for whatever reason their legions of deniers can come up with.

Putting a profit motive in between doctors and patients is quite simply morally indefensible.

Congress, drop this toxic bill and give us what the majority wants, and what we all need: single payer.

Paranoid "doctor's" email making the rounds thoroughly debunked

A letter by a supposed Dr. Stephen E. Fraser, MD to Senator Bayh has been making the rounds as an email since at least August, but is still a hot topic among obsessed Republicans.

There is a thorough debunking of these recycled fabrications at the Read,Think,Go blog. Please spread it around to your Repub friends to try to counter the insanity.

The health care bill we'll end up with is far from what we really need, which is a single-payer system. But the lies being spread need to be countered, as they reinforce the paranoia that Dems are out to 'destroy democracy' and will help bring the power hungry neo-cons back to power if we let it.

For example, the paranoid letter says:

"Pg 22 of the HC Bill - MANDATES the Government will audit books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self insure!!"

Uh, no, the only thing mandated is a study:

The Commissioner, in coordination with the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Labor, shall conduct a study of the large group insured and self-insured employer health care markets.

And:

"Pg 30 Sec 123 of HC Bill A government committee will decide what treatments/benefits you get."

No. There will be a choice of essential, enhanced, premium and premium plus plans for the Public Option. You get to choose what you want to pay for beyond 'essential,' as well as the option to buy more coverage if you want:

There is established a private-public advisory committee which shall be a panel of medical and other experts to be known as the Health Benefits Advisory Committee to recommend covered benefits and essential, enhanced,and premium plans.

And on and on. Pure bs. This debunking should make people question their sources, if they are truly seeking the truth.

Stop the Socialism for the Big Banks

I don’t envy President Obama. While I can take issue with some of his strategies – I believe we should get out of Afghanistan, for example, and he should stop compromising away real health care reform – I can appreciate just how monumental the task of turning this country around is.

Reforming health care? It’s only been nearly a century since Theodore Roosevelt first campaigned in 1912 for it. As Obama told Congress on September 9th of this year, “I may not be the first president to tackle health care reform, but I intend to be the last.” A bold statement, to be sure, something Mr. Obama is very good at. But accomplishing that goal, even with majorities in both houses – as we are seeing – is something else altogether.

Add to that the job of recovering from the greatest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, and you’ve already got a Herculean task. And we haven’t even mentioned all the other sticky issues, like averting a climate crisis, nuclear proliferation, environmental challenges, etc.

One could say that dealing with health care reform just now might have been taking on too much, although it is urgently needed and with Democratic majorities, it seemed like a good time to take it on. But averting financial disaster was not a voluntary task, it was thrust upon the new president. Unfortunately, out of ignorance on the subject, or a blind faith in those in the top echelons of the financial industry, or for whatever reason, Obama chose to trust the wrong team to help him. Now he must recognize his error, and find a new team, and a new strategy. The country’s long term financial health, and even our democracy, depend on it.

In a October 9th interview on PBS’s Bill Moyers Journal with Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, she said, “What they’re doing is they’re taking their mistakes and they’re dumping them on the taxpayer... It’s all at risk because of their behavior. We aren’t reigning them in. The laws of Congress passed last year in terms of housing, were hollow... It’s socialism for the big banks.”

Referring to the president, she said, “I think some of the people that he trusted haven’t delivered. I urge him to get new [financial] generals. It’s time.”

I have to agree, and I’m very sorry Obama couldn’t see from the start that you can’t fix a broken system by hiring the people who broke it, and who are invested in bailing it out. But now that it’s completely obvious, it is time to get a new team in there. Don’t be afraid to admit your mistakes, Mr. President, otherwise you’ll be just like the failed president before you.

Unfortunately, the opportunity inherent in the original crisis may have already slipped away. It may, in fact, be a nearly impossible task, but we’ve got to try. The financial sector needs fundamental reform, and it needs it now.