Blame yourself

Was Tom Daschle (D-SD) telling the truth when he said that the health care public option Obama campaigned on was:

"taken off the table as a result of the understanding that people had with the hospital association, with the insurance (AHIP), and others,"

or was he telling the truth when he said the President really did fully support what he promised to support and that:

"The President fought for the public option just as he did for affordable health care for all Americans. The public option was dropped only when it was no longer viable in Congress, not as a result of any deal cut by the White House."

Does it really matter? Were some people right on the money in telling me that either party would, in time, do just about the same things if elected ?

While I'm not sure that "I'm a maverick/I was never a maverick" McCain wouldn't have buggered up the economy beyond recovery by caving in to every moneyed interest as he always has done, I'm not sure that Obama really ever had the ability to be the kind of People's hero his supporters dreamed of and that he presented himself as. I'm not sure anyone could have been or can ever be, because our government has become a conduit rather than a barrier between the interests of Global power and the perceived wants and dreams of the public -- and we like it that way. We want what they want. We see the government as the enemy rather than those entities behind the government which the government can no longer even desire to control.

We're out in the street supporting tax relief for the billionaires who got that way by taking our jobs abroad and importing foreign workers, legal and otherwise. We support the party that tries to block a tax cut for the vast majority and insist on keeping it for those whose wealth has grown exponentially as ours has faded away or stagnated. Hope itself has become the butt of a thousand jokes.

Since the dawn of supply side economics nothing much has trickled down but debt, no private sector employment was created and all those massive profits that were supposed to translate into more and better jobs simply trickled into hedge funds, tax shelters, fraudulent investments designed deliberately to fail; grossly inflating markets and tempting us all into massive debt. We've supported every false characterization, every fabricated and fanciful bit of data, every promise of future glory as well as every scurrilous slander designed to keep us dancing in stage managed anger on the ends of our puppet strings -- dancing to a tune we think is our own.

Lack of oversight and lack of responsibility cause one disaster after another, yet we keep insisting we need more of the same and any attempt at standing between us and rapacious global profiteers and pirates can handily be dismissed as Communism or Tyranny or Godlessness and "too much government interference." Safety inspections, food inspections, even rules against selling worthless commodities are "government interference with profits," but we're quiet about every increment of additional government power to snoop on us, track our movements, our finances and to interfere with our privacy whether it's the government itself or corporations wanting to sell us more and sleazier things. Cows want to be milked no less than we do, but only we two legged cattle see it as freedom.

It doesn't seem like "socialism" to the fellow who gets his hip replaced at the VA hospital and for far less than he could even if he were employed and had insurance that didn't pass it off as "pre-existing." -- yet he thinks it is "Obamacare" when Big Brother tries to keep United Health Care death panels from denying coverage for his grandson with cystic fibrosis. He oozes platitudes like " well insurance companies have to make a living too" and he doesn't see the difference between making a living and unlimited, government protected rights to make as much as possible without a moral scruple about exploiting human suffering -- and the land, water and air that make life possible. The common good? That's Communism.

No, it's too easy to blame Government, blame Liberals, howl about socialism, 'redistribution' of wealth, chortle about Nancy Pelosi and weep idiot tears with Glenn Beck until we don't notice the shackles. Or maybe you're one of those bumper sticker bozos who think that that hopey changey stuff is just hilarious compared to the same old despair and we ought to keep on staging unfunded wars and ignoring the bill because as the Maverick said: "Debt Doesn't Matter" until, of course, it does and then you can giggle and blame it on somebody else.

Did Obama sell out? Did Congress sell out? Was it the media who told us to walk toward the light when the light was over a cliff? No, you sold out, you bought into it, you gave it all away because otherwise it would be Communism and Fascism and Tyranny. Either that or you thought a new figurehead could steer the ship on a new course. Happy now?

Ron Paul and my rights

Non pudet, quia pudendum est;
prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est;
certum est, quia impossibile.*

I really want to like Ron Paul. There have been times when I felt we needed Ron Paul, even if only to keep the others honest. I concur wholeheartedly with many of his ideas about leaving people alone in their homes and private lives; about transparency in financial matters. I share the loathing of surveillance, of being forced to carry papers. I agree about the wars that are useful only to increase government power over domestic affairs. I agree about the importance of the Bill of Rights that neither Party seems to care much about -- and so on, but I am constantly reminded that I really don't know how he can say what he says, nor can I understand his motivations without postulating entities sufficient to send Occam running down the street screaming.

Two years ago he told us that

"Congress refuses to allow reasonable, environmentally sensitive, offshore drilling."

They did, of course allow drilling, but they allowed unreasonable, unsafe and reckless drilling, free of unbiased oversight, which according to Libertarian doctrine should have magically resulted in safe and reasonable results: they allowed the drillers to tell us what was safe enough and what was too expensive to do. They allowed the rig operators to determine what the lives of the workers were worth relative to profits and they allowed them not to give a damn that my grandchildren may never see a clean beach in Florida or eat Gulf shrimp.

It wasn't reasonable, environmentally sensitive drilling that got us into the current mess, now was it? It could have been all that if the laws had been enforced. The blowout might have been prevented if the people in charge of oversight hadn't been on the oil train and had done their jobs; if the regulations themselves hadn't been written by oil men and largely in secret -- if government hadn't been made to look the other way because of a philosophy teaching that government should look the other way. Eleven good men, many of whom saw this coming, would still be alive had we had some very basic oversight -- if we didn't have people insisting that the people who profit write the rules and the people with everything to lose keep silent or be called Communists.

Yet Dr. Paul says it was because of too much government that BP cheated and lied and people died -- that vast tracts of land and sea were destroyed, important industries were ruined, property made worthless -- and old fashioned as it may sound, I think contradictions in logic and fact weaken an argument. Is it a contradiction that oversight in an industry that has the capability of doing unprecedented damage is "too much government" while giving tax breaks and incentives to companies making tens of billions in profits is not?

Yes, it is a contradiction! Are we really so afraid of Communism that we're willing to accept what is by definition, giving state supported irresponsibility to state supported industries while calling it "limited government?" Or is it that the rather insignificant benefit of allowing a foreign corporation to pump American oil and sell it abroad in amounts that really don't matter either in terms of conservation or the price of crude, is a consummation so devoutly to be demanded that risking the end of the world is not worth talking about?

"We still need oil, and a lot of good jobs depend on oil production,"

he advises us. But do we need that oil, from there and do we need it so much we'll gamble our country's future on it, people's lives and livelihoods on grabbing a tiny bit more of it. We should be held hostage so that foreign corporations who pay hardly any taxes yet have a bigger vote than you do can add to their already obscene profits: so that they can play while we pay -- and pay forever.

It's a bad argument, a very, very bad argument, even coming from someone not smart enough to see that -- and Paul certainly is smart enough, so why is adding an insignificant amount to the current supply of oil so desperately important? Why are oil jobs more important than the countless other jobs destroyed by oil spills? Are today's fishing jobs, logging jobs, more important than making sure that there are fish and trees next week? Libertarianism would seem to say so. Libertarianism would seem to promise that passenger pigeons will return now that they were hunted to extinction, that we'd still have the American Bison and the Bald Eagle if we'd been allowed to shoot as many as we liked, but you know -- it's not true.

Look, I don't think I'm channeling Marx when I say that we don't have crime simply because we have too many police, that Enron destroyed lives and fortunes because the Government looked at their books; that people wouldn't rob banks if banks had no guards and robbery weren't illegal. I don't think it's communism to have a government say: no dammit, you can't build a fireworks factory next to that school and if you build it anywhere, you'll install sprinklers and put up no smoking signs, but that's just what people calling themselves libertarians are saying.

I don't understand and I'm quite sure I don't understand because it's not to be understood, it's to be believed. The pieces of the puzzle don't need to fit, the ideas don't need to work. In fact they have a history which proves it so. It's the logic of emotion; the argument from anger and the special pleadings of selfish solipsism: I don't care what happens to my country if oil is a penny a barrel cheaper for two weeks. I don't care if it's a Ponzi scheme because I'm making money. I don't care if I poison the river, my property rights are my property rights. I don't care if your grandmother can't ride my bus -- it's my bus and my right. I don't know if I'm more disturbed by the fact that I don't understand or by the fear that I do understand.

*There is no shame because it is shameful;
it is wholly credible, because it is unsound;
it is certain, because impossible.

(with apologies to Turtullian)