By Steve Klinger

America’s politically orphaned corporations finally got a few table scraps last week when the Supreme Court declared the government has to treat them just like individual citizens and not restrict them from spending directly on election campaigns. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 majority, basically said we need to take pity on “associations of citizens” and unleash their purse strings to validate their First Amendment rights to free speech. After all, he argued, it’s bad enough corporations can’t vote or run for office.

But couldn’t we do something about that? As Greg Palast wrote (http://readersupportednews.org/opinion/75-politics/807-greg-palast-manchurian-candidates), why stop with campaign spending – how about Walmart for president? Or for that matter, ARAMCO or the China National Offshore Oil Company, which under this SCOTUS ruling can now spend freely to influence elections as long as they are registered as U.S. corporations? Let’s see… would a corporation have to be native-born to run for president? But I digress…

I do think we need a new constitutional amendment to address this latest example of high-court timidity, this propensity to act in half-measures (which irritates Clarence Thomas so much he had to write a separate opinion putting us on notice that this is just the beginning). We could call it the Equal Rights Amendment for Corporations. While we’re at it, we should abolish the Security and Exchange Commission, which has for too long been an obstacle to corporate marriage.

Speaking of associations of citizens, we need a new division of the ACLU to look out for Exxon-Mobil and Citi – something like the Corporate Civil Liberties Union. Corporations shouldn’t have to bankrupt themselves paying high-priced attorneys to defend their interests; if common criminals have access to pro bono lawyers, so should the loyal companies that enrich our lives in so many ways.

They are after all America’s most neglected minority – far fewer in number than any prominent racial or ethnic group – and as the Fearless Five (Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy) finally acknowledged, it’s about time we began leveling the playing field.

In fact, this is not a time for artificial borders. I think we need a worldwide benefit drive to reach out to multinational corporations, something like the relief effort organized for Haiti or the tsunami–ravaged nations in 2004. Kind of like what Washington did on a small scale for Wall Street; you know, bailouts for bank bonuses. We could show our compassion to all corporate executives, a really afflicted group if ever there was one, who now live with daily stress and uncertainty, not knowing where their next yacht is coming from.

We could provide counseling and job retraining programs, a premium food stamp plan to include pâté de foie gras, and special WIC-like benefits for wholly owned subsidiaries. Each community could sponsor its own Adopt-A-Corporation drive. I’m sure hard-working Americans would sign up to sponsor their very own disadvantaged corporate entity and gladly donate a generous portion of their weekly unemployment check to help keep some struggling oil and gas company afloat. (Of course, this already happens with our income tax dollars, but you get my drift.)

The Obama administration and Congress need to stop showing favoritism, as in the current healthcare reform measure that only benefits insurance companies and big pharma. Let’s get back to work on the stalled energy bill to make sure there’s a piece of the pie for agribusiness, fossil fuel producers and all the other core industries that are entitled to make a killing on energy reform.

That said, I can’t wait to see the details of the coming financial overhaul, which to be fair needs to assist all banks, investment companies and other financial institutions. And of course I’m confident it will.

This is, after all, a democracy we live in. Since corporations are people, they too are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And what could make a corporation happier than being able to buy influence more directly so government will remember to validate its individuality.

So get with the program, Stevens, Ginsberg, Breyer and Sotomayor. And thank you, Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Thomas and Scalia for recognizing that corporations too have their American Dream, and having heard the merciful promise, lay themselves at our feet for comfort:

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

–Statue of Liberty inscription, from sonnet by Emma Lazarus

By Thomas Wark

The ascendant characteristic of America’s unholy alliance of the religious right and the political right is fear.

Pat Robertson is an expert with this tool.  Never mind the compassion for which the Jesus he professes to follow was famous in history.  Fire-breathing Pat said the horrible disaster visited upon Haiti this week was God’s vengeance upon a people who made “a pact with the devil.”  What a humanitarian!

When Katrina devastated New Orleans, several followers of the TV evangelists assured me that the terrible damage was God’s vengeance on the city for Madeline Murray O’Hair’s atheism.  Huh?

The vengeful Old Testament God of Pat Robertson keeps the faithful in line.  Who wants to end up dying like a Haitian in an earthquake or a Louisianian in a hurricane?

The theologians of the political right — Karl Rove, Frank Luntz, Newt Gingrich, et al — invoke their own pantheon of vengeful gods.

Dare to question a war on an innocent people; dare to denounce the torture and detention without trial of anyone whose looks our government doesn’t like; have the temerity to note that the American people are no more “special” than the French, the Angolans or the Iranians; suggest for a minute that “free enterprise capitalism” isn’t free for working stiffs and rewards only the enterprise of oligarchs . . . Demons of color will invade your neighborhood, rape your women, enslave your children and leave you bloody and dying on the pavement while your house burns to the ground.

Improve the developed world’s worst health care system?  It’ll kill grandma, deprive you of treatment by a good doctor and force you to risk gangrene at the hands of ill-trained butchers; it’ll make you a pauper, turn you into a robot and give you acid reflux, erectile dysfunction or both.

Curb man-made climate change?  “They” would take away your SUVs, your air-conditioners, your lovely green golf courses,  your half-acre flat-screen TV screens, your jobs, your freedoms and your pride in being the richest, most powerful nation in the whole world.

As long as you’re very, very afraid — of something, anything — you’ll toe the line even as the fear-mongers destroy the economy, savage the Constitution, cancel the Bill of Rights and hold themselves exempt from the laws of decency and ethical behavior.

After all, it’s what keeps you safe.

And We Like Being Afraid!

This from Ring of Fire (Robert F. Kennedy and Mike Papantonio):  In America, sometimes fear is real entertainment.  Not only for those people whose brains are made up of something more than mush but also for the people who love to be afraid.

In 2009, the truly terrified hysterics rushed out to buy guns of every description.  There were many times you couldn’t buy 9mm or 40 caliber shells even for target practice because production couldn’t keep up with demand.  What was everyone afraid of?  Here is the short list:  America elected a “Negro president.”  Democrats were going to take everybody’s guns.  The liberals were planning a “take over.”  The immigrant hoards were going to rape and pillage.  And there was the threat that some ill-defined world catastrophe was always knocking at our door in 2009.  The world was surely ending and only a well-armed militia trained gun owner with a concealed weapon permit would be ready.  We made our love of being afraid into a widespread psychosis.  If you don’t believe me, go to one of those tea party rallies and ask the question:  Why are you here?  At the heart of every response, you will hear vague hysterical fear and loathing of something or someone.  It will usually begin and end with an “O.”

To read more, visit Thomas Wark’s blog: http://bordellopianist.blogspot.com

By Gordon Solberg

As expected, the Copenhagen Climate Conference was a bust, showing once again the inability of government to cope with the unprecedented crises confronting us.  The problem is not so much the concept of government per se, but the fact that governments worldwide have been captured by global exploitative capitalism.  Governments serve their capitalist masters, not the people or the planet.

An increasing number of people correctly predicted an unsatisfactory outcome to the Climate Conference.  This means that more people are waking up to the reality we are living under.

Predicting the future is simple in principle.  The most important step — and also the hardest one — is to correctly assess present reality.  Then you plug in whatever parameters seem the most likely to occur… for example, “more of the same,” or “slight improvement,” or “radically worse,” whatever the case may be in that situation.  Since most people live in a delusional reality to begin with (believing, for example, that we live in a democracy), it’s no wonder that their predictions don’t count for much.

It’s gratifying to see that more people are seeing reality as it is, and are therefore able to see into the future to some extent.  Not that this makes any difference at this point, but at least a few people are awake to present realities.  Many people, for example, predicted that Oblahma would be a vast disappointment…  and sure enough, this has turned out to be the case.  In short, we was had.  (Even though Obama has received many nicknames already, I’m surprised that nobody is calling him Oblahma yet.  This seems like an obvious nickname for him, because when it comes time to assess his legacy, he will be known for three things:  blah, blah, blah.)

I was struck by how the robo-cops are the same the world over, even in “enlightened Scandinavia.”  This is because it’s a Global Empire, not just an American one.  Every element of the Empire has the same goals:  maximum profits, maximum resource extraction, maximum exploitation.  They care not a fig for “survival of the biosphere,”  “social justice,” and other such poppycock.  They are the Masters, they rule, the rabble are now powerless (in fact the rabble barely noticed as the Masters of the Universe took total control during the 50 years after World War II).

Back in the old days – 1968, say – cops were vicious in a hot-blooded way.  If they didn’t like your demonstration, they would crack your head with a billyclub and throw you in the paddywagon and haul your ass to jail.  Then you could all sit together in a cell and sing “We Shall Overcome” all night.  But not these days.

These days, cops – or at least the anti-demonstration robo-cops – are trained to be cold-blooded torturers.  At Copenhagen, demonstrators who got arrested had their hands handcuffed behind their backs, the first step in the arrest ritual.  (Cops do this now as a matter of course… supposedly for the protection of the cops, but actually to reduce the arrestee to a helpless and uncomfortable state.  It’s a dominance ritual.)  Then, the demonstrators were forced to sit on the cold pavement for hours, to the point that some of them had to urinate on themselves.  More dominance.  (This might not seem like much of a torture, but I urge you to try this for a few hours, and let me know how it makes you feel.)  When the demonstrators finally got hauled off to jail, they encountered facilities specifically designed to be as inhumanly uncomfortable as possible.

Modern-day demonstrations are ineffective, and don’t accomplish anything.  No doubt getting beat up by cops gives demonstrators status points with their peers, but so what?  If the demonstrators armed themselves and battled the cops on a more equal footing, so what?  The Masters of the Universe would remain untouched.  Why isn’t more monkeywrenching going on?  It seems obvious that the Empire is vulnerable to some extent:  its exposed flank is everywhere.  Either the hot-blooded young revolutionaries aren’t desperate enough yet, or they’ve been successfully programmed into passivity.  (Not only has the Empire colonized the entire planet, but our own minds as well.)

At any rate, once again we find that the politicians and bureaucrats fiddle while the planet burns.  People – for the most part – still don’t dare to speak the most likely outcome of all this madness.  After all, there’s not much you can do with “massive dieoff.”  You can’t make a career out of it.  People aren’t going to give you a standing ovation when you enter the room.  It’s deemed better to be an Al Gore or Bill McKibben, fighting the good fight till the very end.  Whatever.  We’ll continue to do what we’re already doing, as long as circumstances allow us to do so.  Then we’ll start doing something else.

In my case, my internal guidance is telling me to start thinking about dropping back out.  I was pretty well dropped out at one time.  It was a magical time of great freedom and relatively little impact on the planet, but I didn’t have any kind of act together back then.  Now, seeing what’s coming, I feel like I’ve taken the “laying up treasure on Earth” routine to as ridiculous an extent as I can bear.  It’s time to change my evil ways.  Then maybe more guidance will come.

(Gordon Solberg’s blog is http://newearthtimes.blogspot.com)

By State Sen. Steve Fischmann

The January legislative session is fast approaching, and it’s time for both the governor and the Legislature to step up to the budget crisis.  Temporary federal aid, gauze and Band-Aids have gotten us this far, but the first-aid kit is now empty.  Projected general fund revenues for fiscal 2010 have declined over 25 percent (from $6.4 billion to $4.7 billion), with no sign of significant revenue growth in sight.  Little has been done to address the long-term structural problems we face.  The tough decision-making still lies ahead.

It’s no mystery how we got here: Big increases in state spending, $700 million in tax cuts since 2002 (largely to the highest income earners), “economic development” perks of dubious public benefit, and questionable deals made in a “pay-to-play” political culture.  All of this was financed by a bubble in natural gas severance tax revenue that is unlikely to return, and financial-market shenanigans that fueled a bloated economy.

Tired posturing about indispensable government programs or no new taxes will not solve our problems.  A combination of immediate measures and long-term policy shifts can.  Successful businesses use tough times to reinvent themselves.  That is exactly what New Mexico State government needs to do.  It’s painful, but it sure beats the alternative.  Let’s not waste this crisis.

Here are some ideas for moving forward this next legislative session.

Reducing Government Spending

It’s human nature to get sloppy about spending when there’s lots of money around.  The first step back to financial stability is controlling spending.  The governor has created a citizen panel to review potential tax increases; we should do the same to address potential budget cuts.

There has been much discussion about “across-the-board” cuts to “share the pain.”  This will only result in across-the-board mediocrity.  Large bureaucracies tend to create new programs to solve each newly identified problem.  Real solutions often lie in better delivery of core services rather than layers of new initiatives. Marginal and underfunded programs should be dropped as we refocus on more effective delivery of basic services.

Our public school classrooms are a perfect microcosm of this phenomenon.  Between overcooked federal and state testing mandates, documentation-heavy programs to help struggling students, and a bevy of “flavor-of-the-month” programs, it is widely acknowledged that teachers no longer have enough time to actually teach.  By streamlining and eliminating mandates while maintaining accountability, we can improve instruction and save money at the same time.

Policy adjustments can also significantly reduce spending.  It costs upward of $30,000 annually to house a prisoner in a state corrections institution.  Taxpayers are punished as much as criminals every time we send someone to jail.  Though we call them corrections institutions, the overwhelming evidence is that prisons are far more adept at teaching criminal behavior than correcting it.  Do we really benefit by sending non-violent first time offenders to jail?   Alternative forms of punishment not only save money, but promise fewer career criminals in our future.

Now might also be a good time to review the state procurement code.  Many complain that it often adds significantly to cost.  I don’t pretend to know one way or the other, but given the claimed level of waste, review and possible adjustment of the procurement code seems reasonable.

Restructuring Taxes

Legislators face many proposals for tax breaks for narrow interest groups every year.   Far too many are approved and never reviewed again.  More taxes are exempted in tax credits and deductions than is actually collected in state income and gross receipt taxes each year.  The result is a tax system where tax-break losers subsidize tax-break winners.

We do not need to raise tax rates to increase revenues.  We need only eliminate tax breaks that serve no broad public purpose.  Is it really appropriate that New Mexico auto sales excise taxes are only about half as much as gross receipt taxes on other products?  Other states don’t give this tax break.  Forty-eight states have implemented “consolidated reporting” policies to prevent national corporations from avoiding local state taxes through accounting tricks.  New Mexico has not.  Correcting just these two inequities would increase revenues an estimated $60 to $100 million annually.

Legislation that requires annual review of tax breaks, and that imposes sunset clauses on all narrow tax and economic incentives deserves our support.

Curtailing Pay-to-Play

The impact of pay-to-play is much bigger than the criminal violations we regularly see in the news.  Technically legal transactions that violate the public trust probably cost us far more than illegal activity.  Giveaway deals by the State Land Office, subsidies that give (not loan) hundreds of thousands of dollars to private speculators for every acre of private lots they create, and film incentives that give a cash rebate of $.25 for every dollar production companies spend in New Mexico will cost well over $100 million this year.  Total costs are much higher and are impossible to measure.

If we abhor pay-to-play as much as we let on, we should change the laws that encourage it.  Contractors working for the state, and companies seeking publicly funded subsidies or tax breaks should be prohibited from making political contributions.  There is no hope of curtailing corruption if we’re too faint-hearted to make it illegal.  Legislation that addresses these “ethics” issues may well save taxpayers more money over the long term than any other change we implement.

Steve Fischmann is State Senator for District 37 and a retired Fortune 500 corporate executive.

By Gordon Solberg

I’ve been an observer of politics since junior high school. (Does anybody remember Jack Redman’s run for Congress in 1962?) To me, politics has been the ultimate spectator sport. Like sports, there are winners and losers, with the added thrill that the winners get power in the real world. It’s a compelling spectacle, but lately it’s started to pall for me. I get tired of watching the idiots on Mount Olympus screwing things up. It’s like watching a really bad reality TV series. When you already know how the series is going to turn out, why bother watching?

The Bush era was easy to scope out. The plot line was simple. The Republicans are always cartoonish in their venality, so we always know exactly what to expect from them. When they’re in power, they’ll cram their agenda right down our collective throat, no nonsense. And the Dems will whimper and ask for more. Makes me glad I’m not a Democrat.

Now that the Democrats are supposedly in power, the situation is far more complex. Anything the Dems do is pre-compromised and so convoluted that only a policy wonk can follow the ever-changing twists and turns of a piece of legislation as it makes its tortuous way through the legislative meat grinder. The Dems will jab and feint and dither and flip and flop until you’re totally confused. What do they stand for, again? Oh right, they’re trying to serve two masters: the people who elected them, and the corporations that fund them. Hmmm, they must ask, how to serve the corporations while keeping the people as confused as possible? Maybe incomprehensible legislation will put people to sleep? Maybe sending diametrically opposite messages will keep people confused? And, how about convincing people that instead of insisting on half a loaf, they should just sit back and enjoy the smell of baking bread instead? There are so many options for the clever confusion-monger!

It doesn’t matter what the issue is – health care “reform,” financial system “reform,” climate change legislation, whatever. The end product is a 1000-page piece of legalese that, when you read it under a microscope to parse its true meaning, turns out to actually make things worse. Our 233-year-old experiment in representative government hasn’t turned out very well.

***

The Internet is full of fabulous writers, and just look at the impact they’re having out there in the larger world! (Which just goes to show that if you want to be a major player, you’ve got to get on national TV. Writing is so 18^th century.) At any rate, here are a few of my favorites:

Matt Taibbi. Writes for Rolling Stone and has a blog. I appreciate his insight and take-no-prisoners writing style. http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi

Digby. She posts several times a day on her blog. Her insights into Congress, the press, and all kinds of sociodynamics are unparalleled. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com

Joe Bageant. Born a redneck, and offers a lot of insights into redneck culture and why rednecks vote Republican. http://joebageant.com

James Howard Kunstler. I look forward to his weekly dose of doom-and-gloom every Monday morning. He’s a very entertaining writer, considering his subject matter. http://kunstler.com

Ilargi and Stoneleigh put out a financial blog, The Automatic Earth. They post more financial information than I can assimilate, but I always enjoy Ilargi’s commentary. If you ever find yourself believing the good news propaganda about the economy, try this blog for an antidote. http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com

And of course my own blog. I try to go easy on the political and doom-and-gloom stuff, but sometimes I have no choice. I prefer to post pretty pictures, homestead happenings, signs of the seasons, and other positive reflections of life. It’s still a good life, despite the catastrophes on their way. http://newearthtimes.blogspot.com

By Steve Klinger

President Obama’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan is tragic, ill-advised and yet entirely predictable. The candidate of hope and change could loudly proclaim his unencumbered opposition to the war in Iraq (he wasn’t even a U.S. Senator then), but the President of the United States has a much more difficult time bucking the flow of all the massive forces of military-industrial imperialism that conspire to suck rebellious notions out of a commander-in-chief’s head.

When that president listens too much to the very generals charged with accomplishing some sort of military victory in said war, the conclusion is inevitable; all that’s left is to choose the degree of escalation – in this case, the number of new troops who will be cast into the killing machine.

The buildup will be rationalized with an attempt at a firm exit strategy, of course, and a forceful proclamation that our commitment is not open-ended. Does this start to sound like Iraq? Obama no doubt has convinced himself his decision is the best available option. But no matter how you gift-wrap it, despite months of conferencing, consulting and deliberation, Obama chose not the change for which he was elected but rather perpetuation of a flawed and militaristic foreign policy.

The fact that this nation is armpit-deep in a deteriorating conflict of its own creation is no valid reason to offer up more young Americans to die. Nor is the loathsome alternative of watching the Taliban retake control of this agglomeration of tribal villages reason enough to heighten our commitment to the corrupt Karzai regime and pour an additional $30 billion into propping up a house of cards.

As for Al Qaeda – the target of our invasion in 2001 – multiple intelligence sources now place the core leadership in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. To escalate the war on the soil of the latter does little to defeat the foe that has regrouped in the former. The argument can be made that a heightened U.S. presence will keep Al Qaeda from returning to Afghanistan, but an increased military commitment now does not mean that Afghan forces will rise to the task of defending their own borders any time in the foreseeable future. Beefing up our force for the short term also may reassure Pakistan of our commitment to the region but will not magically stabilize the tottering Zardari government or inspire it to get tough with Al Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban, as long as that divided nation is supportive of those elements.

How many Vietnams and Iraqs does it take to learn the lesson that a military force does not produce a political solution – especially not in a radically different culture, when that force acts as an infidel presence that spreads resentment and instability?

There is so much logic on the side of Obama ordering his generals to cut their losses and pull out of Afghanistan (and make haste to complete the withdrawal our forces from Iraq) that we lose sight of all the weight on the other side of the equation – not morally defensible, but heavy with precedent and pragmatism. There is our history of militarism that has dotted the globe with American soldiers, especially since 1945, our age of empire. There is the defense industry and its incestuous relationship with the Pentagon (what Ike dubbed the military-industrial complex) that drives a huge component of our economy and feeds on unending war. There is the power of the lobbyists for all those interests that thrive on the expansion of markets into corners of the world that must be “protected” by a strong military presence. There is the ever-escalating demand for armaments to match the weapons of our customer-nations’ enemies, real or imagined. And if any would question our unsustainable course, there is the complicit corporate media always at the ready to make the government’s case rather than speak truth to power.

And so Obama will do what every president does, rationalizing the just to accommodate the necessary, sacrificing the indoctrinated to advance the self-interested, cloaking it all in a mantle of benevolent patriotism to protect the self-anointed.

Words, artfully crafted. Emotions, cynically manipulated. Blood, unconscionably let. War, endless justified.

By Steve Klinger

The new slogan bouncing around the Internet is also showing up on bumper stickers, T-shirts, caps and teddy bears (check out www.zazzle.com).

It simply says, “Pray for Obama. Psalm 109:8.”

The psalm itself reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.”

That’s ominous, but maybe it only implies a wish that Obama not be re-elected. Pretty tame stuff, and fairly harmless for a $4.45 bumper sticker, you say.

In the context of  American politics, harmless isn’t the word that comes to mind. Even more troubling is the verse immediately following the psalm referenced: “Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.” Are we going too far to stir those words into the brew?

I guess it depends if your religious fanatic cup is half empty or half full. Actually, recalling the history of violence in this country, much of it in the name of Christianity (from lynchings to assassinations), my cup runneth over. Given the religious right’s glee over the recent slaying of abortion doctor George Tiller, and a presidential campaign tinged with threats of violence, followed by a summer of simmering tea parties, I’m reading the tea leaves right now and they look a little bloody.

Free speech? Protected speech? Sure, and the guys toting weapons outside the town hall meetings were just exercising their 2^nd Amendment rights, and Tim McVeigh was just spouting off when he wore a shirt to the federal building in Oklahoma City that said sometimes the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants.

It’s all well and good until the unthinkable happens, and then a nation is suddenly wringing its hands once again and asking why no one did anything to stop it.

I shouldn’t say “a nation” but rather “most of a nation,” for it is abundantly clear that beyond the solid minority that wishes Obama would be defeated in 2012 there is a hard-core fringe that hopes he has a close encounter with a widow maker right here in 2009. To stimulate that smoldering, irrational anger and cloak it in biblical language is to send a wakeup call to the crazies author Frank Schaeffer calls the American Taliban. A former fundamentalist firebrand, Schaeffer ought to know what makes them tick, so my ears perked up when he said tonight on The Rachel Maddow Show that this particular marketing campaign is deadly serious and totally sinister. Said Schaeffer, “They’re trolling for assassins.”

And it says a lot about the Republican Party and those religious and secular leaders on the right who have been silent in the storm of ugly innuendo and blatant threat, assenting by their refusal to condemn what is obviously a movement to seize power in this country by whatever means necessary, bloody or otherwise.

It also says a lot about those on the left who are too busy tearing Obama to shreds to worry about the hellish nightmare that would be unleashed on this country if he were to be assassinated. When will those on both ends of the spectrum grow up and see that the danger is precisely from the extremities? And right now, from where I sit, Obama’s failings, and they are many, can’t hold a candle to the ugliness lurking beneath the fundamentalist mantle.

Where are those self-righteous Americans who criticize Muslim leaders for not more forcefully denouncing their extremist minorities? Their silence about the hatred festering at the edge of their own movement right here in Amurrica speaks volumes about their hypocrisy — and their complicity in what is waiting to happen.

By Thomas Wark

The late David Rosenbaum of the New York Times, one of the longest-serving true journalists  in the nation’s capital, was a master at reading, digesting and analyzing the important legislation in Congress.

Oh, how we need him today!

The House of Representatives has passed a massive (nearly 2,000 pages) bill designed to provide health insurance for Americans regardless of their ability to pay, and prohibit some of the worst practices of the private health insurance industry such as denying coverage for pre-existing conditions or family health history.

I wonder if any single legislator who voted late Saturday night for or against the bill had read and understood it the way David understood the legislation he wrote about so clearly and lucidly.  I doubt it.

The media accounts don’t really tell us much, either, and what they do say is suspect given today’s media reliance on spin, sound bites, handouts and propaganda. So it’s hard to work up much jubilation because our elected representatitives — at last! — at last! – seem to have taken a meaningful step toward giving our citizens the kind of health care that citizens of most other civilized democracies have long taken for granted.

I share the feelings of my friend and sometime contributor, Mort Persky: “Lord, I hope it’s a good bill that leads to an even better bill, but gotta be highly skeptical.”

Until we can flyspeck the thing, neither he nor I will know if it’s a “good bill,” nor will our fellow citizens.  The mindless lemmings of the right will parrot Limbaugh and Beck and Boehner and other Republican meatheads, prattling about “government takeover” and what-all, as if they actually knew something about the bill.  But their vacuous barnyard leavings don’t matter.

What matters is whether some of our elected representatives actually read every line of the legislation, and its Senate counterpart when that emerges, with as much thought, care and objectivity as David Rosenbaum once did.  If that were to happen, perhaps another Republican mind or two would see what Rep. Joseph Cao, a first-term Republican from New Orleans, saw: that the importance of health care transcends party politics.  He voted “yes” last night. Thirty-nine Democrats, including the whore who represents my district, voted against health care for all. There are like-minded whores in the Senate.

Will any of them see the light of reason?  Most of them won’t even bother to read and analyze what they’re ranting against.

Would that David were still around to tell them.

Read more of Thomas Wark’s blogs at bordellopianist.blogspot.com