Access To Democracy

     With Barack Obama’s election there were millions of us, some as old and jaded as I am, filled with hope that perhaps things would change.  Another idol with clay feet?  Granted, the man has been in office less than one year, came in facing monumental problems caused by the Bush administration and its criminal conduct, and he has tried to move in many directions — perhaps too far too fast, but I find, among other things, his conduct in the health care crisis disappointing, to say the least.

     Obama has made gestures, been a media darling, and used his gift of public speaking and persuasion to warrant attention, but where is the word we don’t hear any more — single payer?  Ah, how soon we forget.

     In a country controlled by lobbyist dollars, shamefully, and by the members of Congress which those dollars buy, even more shamefully, and a U.S. Senate constricted by archaic rules where one member (often representing a minute fraction of the population) can stymie legislation, I wonder if our wonderful system is working.  Or is it really wonderful?  No question about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, no question of the intent of our Founding Fathers, but how has greed and corruption and conflict of interest so managed to turn the dream of our democracy into an absymal  morass of self-interest and self-dealing?

     As I have said over the years, why must every other industrialied — yes, even civilized — nation in the world offer their citizens some form of single payer for health care while this nation, supposedly the world’s “shining light” can’t even offer decent, affordable health care to its people?  The system is strangling the concept, while people die daily for the lack of care.  And the Congress feeds us double-talk and rhetoric as if to convince themselves that they have accomplished a miracle.

     A miracle would have been Medicare E — with stroke of a pen insuring the right of all Americans to health care.  We started our hearing the words single-payer, which faded quickly before the likes of the perfidious Max Baucus, who takes millions in contributions from the health care and pharmaceutical industry, while he warms his bed with a lover whom he tried to foist off as a U.S. Attorney candidate, then gave her a $14,000 raise as an employee, and who has said, in effect to paraphrase Marie Antoinette (with apologies to her less than admirable memory), “Let them eat cake.”  Millions of Americans have no more than crumbs, if that.

     Or the likes of the Republicans, who still haven’t receovered from the election of a Black President, and automatically say “NO” to every proposal.  I would not be surprised that if Sen. Harry Reid (who on occasion finds the gonads to stand up for progress, but far less often than he should) suggested anything to the Senate, no matter how beneficial to the electorate, that the GOP would of habit vote “No.”

     Joe Lieberman, who is a turncoat on positions probably more often than he changes his underwear, and who opposed what the people of his state overwhelmingly want…oh, I forgot his wife’s ties to the Health Care barons.  Conflict of interest, not in Joe’s eyes!   He claims to be a pious man, but he makes a mockery of piety.  Or, as it was said, “Beward of a pious fool, and of a wise sinner.”  It shames me as a Jew to see the sanctimonious Lieberman keep the Sabbath, profess to be a moral man, and ignore the basic tenets of morality and decency regarding health care.

       And so single payer became public option which became cooperatives which became…and so it goes.  And children die.  It makes me ashamed, and it makes me rethink the faith I had that this new Administration would make a change, no matter what the consequences — or at least a concerted effort — be it health care,  or not sending more of our finest and bravest to their deaths in foreign lands which are unconquerable and in which we should not be spilling blood in the face of centuries of historical lessons.

     And so, once again it is Hannukah.  Will the light in the temple burn for eight days, or is it flickering from lack of oxygen?