It's the morning of the Day After Weiner Socks it to Congress, calling the Republicans a "wholly-owned subsidiary of the insurance industry", and the video is going viral--I can only hope. I'm going to do my part today to pester everybody in America about it, and I'd better not be the only one. I'm asking--no, begging--everyone who cares about putting an end to the corporate takeover of our once-great country to join forces with the good congressman from New York. (Okay, it's New York. I know, I know. . .we here in the hinterlands don't CARE how they do it in New York. But this guy gets us. He cares about us. He actually is--dare I say?--one of us.)
Rep. Anthony Weiner (Big D-NY) has been one of my heroes for a long time now. His passion, his outrage over corporate excesses and governmental indifference is inspiring and always entertaining.
He is smart and funny and absolutely sure of his positions on everything. He wants Single Payer and he makes no bones about it. Medicare for All. But he's open to a Public Option, if that's what they're going to settle for. As long as it leads to Single Payer. What he's totally, rabidly against is Business as Usual. Oh, how he's railed against it. Sometimes he gets close to looking like Jimmy Stewart at the end of that long filibuster scene in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", and I suffer with him. Life can be hard for defenders of the people these days.
But my man Anthony rose above even himself yesterday, and today I celebrate and revel in his outrageously over-the-top outrage. It's about time. I love that man!
So in this clip are my two favorite people's people: Anthony Weiner and Rachel Maddow. The very nature of this video ensures hate mobs going after it with a vengeance. Who cares? This is for US:
We may be slow learners, but the rest of the industrial world has figured it out: Universal, single-payer or national health care systems. That's the reason why all those other countries cover everyone, have better patient outcomes, cause no one to declare bankruptcy or lose their homes because of medical bills, and spend less than half per capita on health care than we do. We could do it too, by reducing the starting age for Medicare from 65 to 0. There's still time to act. - Michael Moore, Huffington Post, 9/29/09 _____________________________________________________________________
What matters is this: We, the citizens and taxpayers, may win a skirmish or two, but in the end Big Business will win the battle. They owned us yesterday, they own us today, and unless we finally get wise and get tough, they'll own us tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.
They own us because they've ceaselessly, endlessly, without thought of the consequences, bought and paid for the loyalties of the majority of our elected officials.
We haven't quite come to terms with it yet--mainly because we can't quite believe it. We expect that sort of maneuvering by the Republicans. Going against the Common Good in favor of the capitalists is in their DNA. They apparently can't help it.
But the Democrats? The Democrats. The Blue Dogs--those dirty dogs--have sold us out. But the Blue Dogs aren't the only ones. Not by a long shot. On the Senate side, Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad, Bill Nelson and Tom Carper all voted against the public option. Not surprisingly, they've all had their fingers in the Health Care honey pot. According to Raw Story, those five senators have up to now received some 19 million dollars from the opposition to health care reform. That opposition being, of course, the Health Care industries. Those industries, I have to remind myself, that are devoted to caring for our health.
Sixty votes is the magic number. Sixty Senate "yea" votes means a filibuster-proof passage. It's the number that, if it isn't there, stops everything. Convenient, isn't it? It means even those who side with the insurance companies but don't want to admit it have an easy out. "Can't vote yet because we don't have the 60." Okay. So what?
Where are the Dems who, if they're too cowardly to go for Single Payer, will at least put the vote for Public Option out there? If it's voted down, after jawing about it for hours or days or weeks, then start all over again. Put it out there again. And then again. Wear those filiblustering bastards down.
Millions of sick people are without a safety net. People who could be saved are dying here. There is no reason, save greed, that we don't have a government-sponsored health care system. I know it. You know it. We all know it. If it's not in our budget, then shame on them. They built that bloated budget on taxpayer money coerced from us through fear and outright lies. Now that we need it for actual Common Good, they're going to pretend it's asking too much. No. They've asked too much of us for too long. Now it's payback time. They owe us.
So what are we going to do about it? How long does this conversation go on? There are people in our government who are intent on holding this up, and they're out there openly, blatantly, recklessly, holding this up. We know who they are. And they know we know who they are. And they don't care.
So what are we going to do about it? Good God. . .are you as sick of this as I am? Enough, already. There are some enormous asses out there for the prodding, so. . .where the hell is my pitchfork?
There are so few mainstream investigative journalists in this country anymore, I have to wonder in whose pockets the MSM has cozily slipped--and why.
When one of our best investigative newspapers has slipped to such depths that it's publisher invites health insurance execs hellbent on killing any hint of public options to hobnob with, and thus lobby, top-level White House officials at a private soiree in her own home (but only if they fork over $25,000), and when nobody else seems to notice or care, we can give up any remaining quaint notion of a watchdog press.
We're on our own, folks, and if not for the precious few like Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow, we would be dead in the water. They are the mainstream media remnants of a once-proud profession and we need to treat them like the treasures they really are.
They study the issues, they bring on guests who can discuss them intelligently, they ask the right questions, they give their guests time to answer thoughtfully, they continue the conversation with smart follow-ups, and best of all, they don't give up their precious air time to raucous, spitting catfights between notoriously biased opponents.
Last week, Bill Moyers brought to our attention two important stories. (See above for the first one)
On "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS Friday night, Bill talked with Wendell Potter, a former Cigna exec turned whistleblower. In Potter's own startling words (startling not because we didn't know, but because a former insider, someone who, less than two years before, was a practicing purveyor of these professed sleazy tactics, said them):
“The industry has always tried to make Americans think that government-run systems are the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, that if you even consider that you're heading down the slippery slope towards socialism... I think that people who are strong advocates of our health care system remaining as it is, very much a free market health care system, fail to realize that we're really talking about human beings here, and it doesn't work as well as they would like it to... They are trying to make you worry and fear a government bureaucrat being between you and your doctor. What you have now is a corporate bureaucrat between you and your doctor... The public plan would do a lot to keep [health insurance companies] honest, because it would have to offer a standard benefit plan. It would have to operate more efficiently, as does the Medicare program. It would be structured, I’m certain, on a level playing field so that it wouldn’t [have an] unfair advantage [over] the private insurance companies. Because it could be administered more efficiently, the private insurers would have to operate more efficiently.”
The interview is a half-hour long. Later into it he outlines the insurance industry's efforts to discredit Michael Moore's documentary, "Sicko", when they saw the truth in it and were afraid the American people might believe it, too. This to me was a stunning admission, the entire interview an astonishing piece of journalism--again, not entirely surprising, but I saw a door opening, enough for us to wedge our foot in. Wan rays of sunshine about to turn dazzling, if only we can keep the momentum going.
I beg everyone who reads this and clicks onto the link to send it on to everyone you know. Send it to your congressmen, your governors, your legislatures, the White House. Get an email chain going--put the link up on yard signs or billboards. Put it on bumper stickers. Stencil it on tee-shirts or tattoo it onto your forehead. Whatever it takes.
This is a television event too important to let die. Please. Keep it alive. Keep it going. It's up to us now.
