Liarman strikes
What corporate power has made of a once-proud country
October 31st 2009
Joe Lieberman has come
to represent what America has become.
Unfortunately, that's a pretty ugly sight.
Lieberman, who became an Independent in order to cling to power back in 2006 when disgusted Democratic voters tried to kick his ass out in the state primary, was able to keep his seat that year in part by campaigning for universal health care. He lured Republican voters by promising to support Bush's ruinous tax policies, and to unswervingly support the hundreds of billions wasted on the twin occupations in Asia.
So he came out Wednesday and told the world that he was going to join the GOP in filibustering against the health care reform bill because he was afraid of what it would do to the deficit.
Even Republicans had to be sucking their cheeks in and wincing in private. What Joe was doing was basically the equivalent of a young woman loitering in red pumps, a micro-dress and crotchless panties in front of the police station.
It's unlikely that 25 people in the country bought Joe's explanation. Even Faux News and talk radio, usually fast to lionize a defector from Democratic ranks, were curiously subdued about it. Oh, they crowed that it would kill health care reform, but about Joe himself they were pretty quiet. Even by their standards, his was a pretty disgraceful performance.
By traditional politics, as has been pointed out by many pundits, Joe's stance was inexplicable. Health reform will save the country tens of billions a year, even in a weakened form. With a robust public option, it would save hundreds of billions, and reduce the deficit.
Nor does he have public support. In his home state of Connecticut, public option has the support of 68% of voters. Health care reform has the support of nearly 80%.
He can't even argue that he is philosophically opposed, because he ran on a platform of supporting universal health care in 2006.
He did complain that “We're trying to do too much at once”, an objection that apparently didn't occur to him when he voted to lavishly fund the occupations of two Asian countries, and supported the PATRIOT ACT, which basically gave government the power to ask your phone company to spy on you, and to eliminate four of the ten items on the Bill of Rights.
As recently as 2006, Lieberman could claim to be a progressive on most things, but whatever progressive ideals he had evaporated in a hurry during his frantic efforts to cling to power in 2006.
Here's what he says about the relatively mild public option – a step in the direction of universal health care – today. “I feel so strongly about the creation of another government health insurance entitlement, the government going into the health insurance business, I think it's such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single senator to stop a final vote.”
He's become such a whore to the Republicans and the Insurance companies and HMOs (who chipped in $1.6 million to get him elected as an Independent after Democratic voters threw his ass out of the election process) that he can't even allow a simple up-or-down vote.
It's the sort of behavior you expect from Republicans.
Joe Lieberman is a Republican. It doesn't matter what he calls himself, he sold out, and he's a Republican. The minute he votes to end cloture, the Democrats need to throw him out of the caucus and strip him of his seniority. They let him keep those in return for supporting the party on important votes, and he betrayed them as much as he betrayed his own constituents.
Not everyone in Congress is a whore for the insurance industry or Big Pharm or the HMOs. But that's the way to bet. If your Congressional rep is a Republican, then it doesn't matter what his or her personal beliefs are: the party demands utter lock-step obedience, and will destroy the career of anyone who deviates on any significant issue. So even if your rep isn't a whore personally, that rep is marching in lock-step with all the other whores, and personal integrity has nothing to do with how that rep will vote.
With Democrats, there's some variation. Some, like Senator Baucus, are as just as bought out as Lieberman, and are scrambling to do the bidding of the industries. At the other end is Dennis Kucinich, the House representative from Cleveland who is still pressing for a House vote on single payer.
Single payer is far too radical for the timid, bought-out clowns of Congress to even consider. Mind you, this is the highly successful program Canada has. Doctors and hospitals are private businesses. Patients can choose any doctor they want. It enjoys nearly universal approval in Canada, costs 60% of what Americans pay per capita, and covers everyone in Canada. It's a nearly perfect blending of private business and government social service.
But just as the contemptible Lieberman is fighting to prevent the Senate from even DEBATING the even milder public-option, Democrats in the House are fighting to prevent a floor vote on single payer. Probably the large number of bought-out Democrats such a vote would reveal is too embarrassing.
That leaves the tepid public option, which is a kind of a baby step toward single payer. It provides for a public insurance company to provide coverage to people who cannot get it through private insurance companies. It was originally proposed as a alternative to regulating the insurance companies, and demanding that they end the practices of pre-existing conditions, rescissions, and other abuses. The insurance companies thought this was a good idea, until they realized that despite what their own propaganda claimed, such a government program would work, and undercut them by at least 40% on the premiums.
In the Randian world of the free market, the last thing the consortium of private enterprises want to see is actual competition. What they want is a nice, gentlemanly competition such as exists between oil companies, where prices are never more than a couple of pennies apart, and they have absolute control over retail “independent” outlets and what they charge. This gives them absolute control of the market and prevents the horror of a centrally-run economy.
As a result, with nearly utter control of all Republicans, and control of a good chunk of Democrats, they have an ideal goal: in which a reform bill goes through that contains no actual substantive reform at all, and indeed might just tighten things up, making it easier for insurance companies to gouge and cheat customers, while making sure that they only have to deal with the type of customer who is worth gouging and cheating. No more messing about with sick people, or poor people.
And more and more, it looks like that's what this pathetic excuse for a Congress will give us: a “reform” bill so hopelessly watered down that it won't even qualify as soup, or possibly even something that makes things worse. It could be like the Medicare “reforms” of the Bush administration that took a highly successful and popular program and made it a bureaucratic nightmare that bankrupts people and costs more and loses money hand-over-fist.
So Lieberman, slimy little whore that he is, might actually be right: Nothing might be better than any “reform” that comes along now.
If we get fake reform, we're probably stuck with that for a generation, as happened with the Nixon “reforms” that inflicted HMOs on us.
If we get nothing, people can make health care reform THE issue of the 2010 election, and use it to throw out Republicans and Liebermans, and as many industry whores as they can. It will be easy to do: don't listen to what any candidate says. Just look to see if he is getting significant money from HMOs, insurance companies, Big Pharm, the Chamber of Commerce, or other major industries. If they are, throw them out!
I think we're near the point where a total loss now might be our best option for meaningful reform in the near future.
If Kucinich gets his floor vote, we'll have a pretty good idea of who has to go first.