Time’s up. The Goliaths of our healthcare system have stepped over the line. They told us how intelligent they think we are. It didn’t sound like a compliment.
They told Obama with a straight face that they had a plan to help him get the reform he wants. They had their fingers crossed. They are staging public relations stunts with the President while Maximus Baucus intends to control the shape of whatever oozes from the cesspool that is the Senate Finance Committee.
There is an elegant way to beat them. It will take some effort but the results will be truly gratifying.
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Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) is Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The committee has 23 members.
Senator Max, as the boss man, has a very high price tag. He has received more money from the healthcare industry than any other Democrat. You don’t want to know how much the entire committee raked in. After all, it includes people like Orrin Hatch, John Cornyn, Jon Kyl, Pat Roberts and Chuck Schumer.
How do they love him? Let us count the ways.
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Obama has promised healthcare reform. It seems likely that we actually will get reform. But, reform is a neutral word. The question is: What will the reform look like?
Over the past weekend I heard that none of the Congressional committees holding hearings on the subject had scheduled any witnesses who supported a single payer system. Why? If a committee has a proposal, the Congressional Budget Office runs the figures. Since the numbers for a single payer system would put any alternatives to shame, they would have a difficult job explaining any other choice.
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I admit that I was caught off guard. Hearing Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, recently invoking secession came as no real surprise. Hearing that he has switched parties was truly unexpected.
It was startling. Little Ricky, a true regressive ideologue, has changed from Texas Republican to, wait for it . . . socialist.
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Bipartisanship sounds like an admirable quality. Is it?
When Obama wanted some Regressive Senators to sign on to his stimulus bill he had to make some deals. One of the deals was with Susan Collins. She thought $780 million for pandemic control was better spent on tax cuts.
Obama caved in the name of bipartisanship. If one side says white is white and the other side says white is black, what does the compromise look like? Pure idiocy.
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President Obama should know better. I am certain that he does know better.
Did he forget that he was a professor of Constitutional Law? Did he forget the proper relationship of the Department of Justice to the Oval Office? The President has his own legal counsel just down the hallway in the West Wing. The DoJ is not the President’s law firm. It is the people’s.
The decision as to whether to investigate and prosecute malefactors is a decision to be left to the Attorney General, not the President. As a former politician I can appreciate that the question of whether to prosecute those involved in the torture policies of the Bush administration is a political question. It is also a question of law.
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Decisions, decisions. Uncle Sam or the Robber Barons, whom do you trust? Don’t answer too quickly. The crisis we face is far too dangerous for us to continue playing games. It is far too serious for us to base all of our decisions on myths.
Capitalism, socialism, communism, mercantilism, all isms are juvenile attempts at providing grossly simplified answers to extremely complex problems. It is way past time for us to grow up.
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I am initiating a new, virtual award. It is dedicated to our endless supply of bottom feeders. The difficult part is, and will continue to be, deciding among the superabundance of candidates. If I had the time this could be an hourly award. Okay, who has the honor of being the first recipient?
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In my dotage the fogey in me has preeminence. My wife has semi-unretired from teaching and this is the week of Spring Break. During my first trips through the Groves of Academe I doubt that most college students had discovered Mexico; certainly not Cancun.
Ft. Liquordale may have been an actual fort back in those times. Later trips to the Groves I had family responsibilities. Spring Break was not, for me, a period of binging, on alcohol or anything else.
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Did you even notice that there was a war going on? There has been a one-sided class war going on for decades. It is now over. The elites won decisively.
It’s really quite odd. Few of the poor and middle class realized it was happening. Most of the wealthy also were unaware of the war. How could that be?
Look at Geithner. Is he a bad guy? No. He’s just someone sucked into Wall Street’s version of scientology. Some have suggested that he be replaced by an actual deer in the headlights. His arrogance and hubris go unnoticed by his friends and peers, even by he himself. It is just so ingrained in the elites that they accept their sociopathy as normality.
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