Two items of recommended reading this morning, both pointing to underlying problems which have surfaced in the health care debate but greatly affect the passing of any legislation containing substantive changes. First, Paul Krugman in yesterday's New York Times about the filibuster rule in the Senate:
And since President Obama took office that number has increased to virtually 100%, which is why the "fix it later" approach is going to be a difficult, if not impossible, row to hoe in today's political climate. When previous legislation, such as Social Security and Medicare, was improved incrementally there was this creature known as a moderate Republican who was willing to work with Democrats to enact those changes. That creature is now extinct and chances it will emerge again any time soon are slim and none.
The other article is a piece at Salon by Glen Greenwald about the merging of corporate interests and government policy. It's lengthy, but well worth the time. This is the gist of it:
My take on Greenwald is this--we need another wall of separation. This one between corporations and state.
"...Democrats won big last year, running on a platform that put health reform front and center. In any other advanced democracy this would have given them the mandate and the ability to make major changes. But the need for 60 votes to cut off Senate debate and end a filibuster -- a requirement that appears nowhere in the Constitution, but is simply a self-imposed rule -- turned what should have been a straightforward piece of legislating into a nail-biter. And it gave a handful of wavering senators extraordinary power to shape the bill.
Now consider what lies ahead. We need fundamental financial reform. We need to deal with climate change. We need to deal with our long-run budget deficit. What are the chances that we can do all that -- or, I'm tempted to say, any of it -- if doing anything requires 60 votes in a deeply polarized Senate?
...Yes, there were filibusters in the past -- most notably by segregationists trying to block civil rights legislation. But the modern system, in which the minority party uses the threat of a filibuster to block every bill it doesn't like, is a recent creation.
The political scientist Barbara Sinclair has done the math. In the 1960s, she finds, "extended-debate-related problems" -- threatened or actual filibusters -- affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the minority, it soared to 70 percent."
And since President Obama took office that number has increased to virtually 100%, which is why the "fix it later" approach is going to be a difficult, if not impossible, row to hoe in today's political climate. When previous legislation, such as Social Security and Medicare, was improved incrementally there was this creature known as a moderate Republican who was willing to work with Democrats to enact those changes. That creature is now extinct and chances it will emerge again any time soon are slim and none.
The other article is a piece at Salon by Glen Greenwald about the merging of corporate interests and government policy. It's lengthy, but well worth the time. This is the gist of it:
"Whether you call it "a government takeover of the private sector" or a "private sector takeover of government," it's the same thing: a merger of government power and corporate interests which benefits both of the merged entities (the party in power and the corporations) at everyone else's expense."
My take on Greenwald is this--we need another wall of separation. This one between corporations and state.
Big problem. Are the crooks who are benefitting from the current campaign finance laws going to kill the goose that keeps laying all those golden eggs? Doubt it.
Campaign finance MUST be reformed or we, as a country, may be doomed to the same mismanagement we have been subjected to for most of the past 30 years. Huge government deficits, unecessary wars, profiteering by the financial institutions, abuse and rape of the citizenry by big business especially the insurance companies and healthcare industry.
We, the people, just don't count. But when you have the fox guarding the henhouse.......you got a heap o' trouble.
Yep. We've got ourselves the best government money can buy.
We MUST have campaign finance reform. Who among us can afford to lobby the congresscritters the way Big Pharma (or any other big industry, ie, Halliburton) can?
NONE of us. Which is why we are being ignored and OUR desires and needs not being considered, much less met. These industries are buying every single Congressperson and they're not even trying to be subtle about it.
Get those emails going to your representatives and to the White House.
I am sick and tired of their version of the Golden Rule. And I don't want to see any TeaBagging celebrations next year.
Interesting take by Huffington...perhaps you all have already seen it. If so, I am sorry for being late to the game.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/the-senate-health-care-bi_b_400006.html
I'm trying, I'm trying but I keep striking out. Good post, RHM, but we need more people who think before they pull the lever not just the zombies who seem to be there in larger and larger numbers.
There is only two ways out of the mess we have - one is openly touted by the tea baggers and involves violence. The other method, by peaceful and lawful means also can take two different tracks. One, is to, over time, try to elect enough "progressives" to enact legislation that will restore our checks and balances. The other, is for the American people to take to the streets and start demanding through peaceful protest and civil disobedience.
Democracy doesn't come from the top. It comes from the bottom. Democracy is not what governments do. It's what people do. "If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed." [A People's History of the United States 1980, Howard Zinn]
"Because whenever the government has done anything to bring about change, it's done so only because it's been pushed and prodded by social movements, by ordinary people organizing, by, you know, Lincoln pushed by the anti-slavery movement. You know, Johnson and Kennedy pushed by the southern black movement. And maybe hopefully Obama today, maybe he will be pushed by people today who have such high hopes in him, and who want to see him fulfill those hopes.
... traditional history creates passivity because it gives you the people at the top and it makes you think that all you have to do is go to the polls every four years and elect somebody who's going to do the trick for you. And no. We want people to understand that that's not going to happen. People have to do it themselves."
If I could get any idea through people's heads, it would be the message Howard Zinn tries so hard to instill. Good governance, like our economy, bubbles UP, from the BOTTOM. Think civil rights and MLK, think Susan B Anthony down to NOW and women's rights, think Vietnam War, think Samuel Gompers and labor rights, ad infinitum.
Now, someone tell me what great societal good came trickling down from elected politicians? Any one?
Yes, it's a free speech issue, all right, but the free speech right being violated is mine -- mine and every other individual citizen in the U.S.
Dollars equal free speech only in the minds of the supremes. And I think they're wrong.
Irony of ironies, I don't have the money to pursue a lawsuit.
carguy i'm with missy, david gregory pissed on tim russert's grave sunday in his axlerod piece. occurred to me that gregory is nothing more than a script reader on meet the press, he has no ideas and seems to be trying too hard for "middle of the road" to right leaning, almost in a way to make sure msnbc can equalize with the sunday fox show. thinking he's being "tough" on obama administration because he's paranoid people think he's soft. missing in action in the meantime is any substance as he comes off sounding whiny and like a pansy afraid someone will not like him. i say luke russert should take over, he made short work of andrea mitchell's same tactic sat morning while covering the senate debate.
I don't think that abolishing PACS is doable; violation of free speech grounds.
There is an argument for equal time or equal financing for the average individual who for many legitimate reasons is unable to accumulate the concentration of moneys that the PACS are able to do thereby depriving the average individual of equivalent free speech access to the powers-that-be.
I think more practical near term approach would be to make PACS have full disclosure of who and to where the moneys flow period. No exceptions and there must be meaningful consequences for violations.
I have said in the past that I'm for term limits for all elected positions but only if the lobby industry and entrenched bureaucracy are taken into account. As for the retort that an elected official is indispensable, I refer to an attributed quote of DeGaulle who said that the cemeteries are full of indispensable men.
Good luck on either one of those!
How about no PACs and no lobbyists? One bill, one issue. Every elected official votes on every bill for the record.
We need some real transparency here.
And some balls.
Ecellent take on this. The more we x-ray our government, the more "fracures" we detect. With the fine constitution our forefathers left us, how'd we get in this "fine mess ?" More important, how do we fix it?
stexcat (below) is right. Also, TOO MUCH power in the hands of a few. We certainly saw that this weekend.
I must relate an incident that occurred at my house Sunday:
I was watching "Meet the Press" Sunday and Axelrod was on. We got a new cat in July at the Houston Humane Society. Really cute, her name is Missy. She was on my lap. After about 15 minutes of discussion with Gregory, Missy looked at me and said, "This guy comes off as a WHINY WUSS."
WHOOOOAAAAA!! A FREIKING TALKING CAT ??!!!! DAMN!!!!!!
I looked at her in disbelief and said, "We've had you for 6 months and you're just NOW saying something?"
Missy replied, "Up 'til now everything was OK. But this guy really pisses me off."
One of the ways to do this is limit, or abolish, the PACS. The current use of PACS, and the political leverage it gives special interest groups is nothing more than legalized bribery. The saddest fact is that our legislators, particularly key committee chairs or ranking members, are open to such bribe taking. Why shouldn't political funding be limited solely to individual donations or government with very specific limits on campaign spending ?