We are approaching a decade of war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq is in its eighth year. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands more Afghans and Pakistani civilians have been killed. Millions have been driven into squalid displacement and refugee camps. Thousands of our own soldiers and Marines have died or been crippled physically and psychologically. We sustain these wars, which have no real popular support, by borrowing trillions of dollars that can never be repaid, even as we close schools, states go into bankruptcy, social services are cut, our infrastructure crumbles, tens of millions of Americans are reduced to poverty, and real unemployment approaches 17 percent. Collective, suicidal inertia rolls us forward toward national insolvency and the collapse of empire. And we do not protest. The peace movement, despite the heroic efforts of a handful of groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Green Party and Code Pink, is dead. No one cares.
The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families. Continue reading →
Originally published at The Huffington Post. Written by Dan Froomkin
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration officials last fall warned the Department of Interior, which regulates offshore oil drilling, that it was dramatically underestimating the frequency of offshore oil spills and was dangerously understating the risk and impacts a major spill would have on coastal residents.
Watching Obama talk tough with the Regressives yesterday was invigorating, wasn’t it?
Here was the President, leading on an issue that matters so much to so many people in a transparent healthcare debate. Even if this transparency came after a year of public debate and back room dealing with big Pharma wherein Obama promised to block any Congressional efforts to bargain for lower drug prices. Even if such back room dealings insure against the highly unlikely event of any significant number in the house or senate growing a spine considering that Health Insurers and their employees have donated 2.2 million to the top 10 recipients in the House and Senate, while Drug makers gave 3.3 million to the same group since 2005. The biggest beneficiaries include regressives John McCain and Democrat Max Baucus who, as the head of the Finance Committee has a thing or two to say about health insurance reform.
So, while Obama’s Health Care Summit has pundits like Chris “I forgot he was a black man” Matthews literally frothing at the mouth and anchoring expanded 3 hour coverage of this unexpected political Superbowl between the Democrats and the Regressives one thing is for certain and two things for sure.
One: This is not a debate about health care. It is a debate about health insurance. Obama’s plan will do many things, not the least of which will be to strengthen the financial portfolios of those who are invested in health insurance stocks. It is taking taxpayer money and funneling it directly, in the form of mandates, into the pockets of insurance companies who will continue to honor their commitment to shareholders, not patients.
And two: The progressive position – single payer, Medicare for all, was never allowed to become part of the debate. Not yesterday. Not since Obama has been in office. This solution would have eliminated waste; indeed, it would have eliminated the whole organized criminal activity that makes up the health care insurance industry while covering everyone.
The regressive argument against this- and even the lame Obama plan was articulated by regressive Lamar Alexander yesterday when he said, “the federal government does not do comprehensive well we are just to big, as a country.”
So what does our States United- the federal government, do well?
We do war, isn’t that right regressives? Democrats? We are doing our darndest to ensure that when the end of days comes and the book of history is closed, that the USA is still king of the hill.
So, my fellow Americans, we can work on a state-by-state level to enact Medicare for all, as California just did. That is one option. Or the nation can look itself honestly in the mirror and acknowledge that even if we can not muster the empathy to act on the fact that, given our current foreign policy, that the long term survival of the human race is predicated on the peaceful dismantling of the United States, perhaps the survival instincts of those of us not in the richest 1% in this country will realize, like Regressive Lamar Alexander that wherever BIG GOVERNMENT of THE USA HAS GONE it has, almost without exception, broken things beyond repair.
Look at Vietnam. Hiroshima. Iraq. Native America. And now, pressing into the 21st century, we remain the only developed nation in the world to willfully stand by and allow our citizens to die for lack of health care.
45,000 deaths a year, according to a recent Harvard study. That is like 15 9/11’s.
The United States of America is too big for its own good.
And my fellow patriots- if you truly stand for the principles set forth in our Constitution, then you must perforce agree that our country can stand a healthy debate about whether or not it deserves to continue existing.
Empires fall. I acknowledge that the founding fathers were certainly on to something, but any close observer of the U.S. over the past several decades must come to this conclusion: it is time to hit the reset button.
Small is the new big.
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THE HERMIT WITH DAVIS FLEETWOOD is a satiric look at the top headlines, current events, and political trends. The show is Independently produced by a staff of one & runs on the fuel of your individual donations.
