used with permission of the artist, "Tom Tomorrow"
America is facing a health care crisis, and Democratic leaders seem aware of it, but have decided that conceding every policy point to the Republicans before the legislative process begins is the best approach for achieving meaningful reform. That way, when Blue Dogs and the GOP push back, Congress can produce a meaningless, watered-down placebo perfect for giving the appearance of action while 22,000 continue to die unnecessarily every year. It makes me proud to be an American.
It started when our post-political President developed the framework of reform by inviting the insurance companies to hand over their wish list: mandates for coverage, no restrictions on anti-competitive business practices, and the ability to cherry-pick young healthy people out of the system while dumping everyone else into a public program that will eventually have to shut down for lack of funds. Congressional leaders then showed remarkable courage by placing the most meaningful reform option off the table: no nasty single-payer system. After all, a policy supported by only 59 percent of Americans absent any positive propaganda whatsoever is clearly a pie-in-the sky political non-starter. How dare 300 million mere citizens and taxpayers think that their lives and health are more important than the profits of tens of thousands of shareholders (i.e., people who matter)? The nerve of this rabble!
So instead of stupidly solving the problem of preventable disease, spiraling costs, 50 million uninsured, and about 75 million more insured in name only by risk-pooling and lifetime coverage, our paladins of Change are wisely choosing to construct another giant giveaway to industry sure to move this nation’s insolvency date just a little closer. Boy, I sure am glad none of those unrealistic nut-jobs were able to derail this sober political process!
After all, it worked for Global Warming!
I was originally going to call this blog “The Power of Crisis,” until I discovered that world-class scam artist Tony Robbins had beaten me to the name. The name was evocative because it seemed to crystallize the idea that there is opportunity in the impending collapse of much of our way of life. The inertia and apathy that helped to cement the post-war order can’t survive when the people who hold its assumptions can no longer breathe.
John Mica, one of the most retrograde of the pay-to-play brigade, is running for reelection again. This is a man who believes that women should die rather than receiving abortions that could save their life. He pushed to get pork for his campaign contributors into the stimulus bill, then voted against it. He wants to cut taxes across the board and increase spending, as if we weren’t bleeding red ink catastrophically. He wants to increase the maximum allowable contribution to federal candidates in an age when working Americans can’t even get in the door to the legislative process. This oligarch is a living insult to the tens of millions of Americans struggling to survive in the wreckage of an economy rigged in favor of the special interests Mica loves so dearly.
We live in a strange time in American public life. Many of the truths we have held as immutable are revealing themselves to be aspects of a special and transient post-war world that is rapidly becoming untenable. From our identical homes on quarter-acre lots thirty miles away from work to our massive military forces securing the raw materials necessary to preserve this mausoleum civilization, from the escalating costs of education and health care to our steadily mounting debt financed by economic and strategic rivals, the post-war order is fraying badly and will fail completely more sooner than later.