Evolution of Consciousness

Congressman Mike Thompson attended a business luncheon in Fort Bragg a week ago Friday. About twenty healthcare activists stood outside with placards, encouraging drivers to honk for Single Payer. Christina Aanestad, from KZYX radio, covered the event. I happened to catch her report the following Tuesday.

Mike Thompson’s basic response to the question of why he refuses to support Single Payer was that there are just too many Americans out there who love their health insurance and are terrified of change. Huh? Who are these people? Where are they? (Dick Cheney’s man-sized safe comes to mind.) The truth is they don’t exist, at least not in the vast numbers that Mike is suggesting. This inane excuse is nothing more than a sound bite cooked up by the insurance industry.

Another talking point the spinmeisters came up with was the phrase “quality, affordable health care.” It doesn’t really mean anything, but they found, through focus groups, that some voters salivate when they hear these words. So any time you hear a politician or pundit use the phrase “quality, affordable health care” you know they are on the industry payroll.

They have also co-opted the term “universal healthcare.” It used to mean everyone is covered, but the industry (and their shills) now use it to mean that government will force everyone to buy health insurance from the for-profit outfits that have wrought this crisis.

Note to Mike: when people use the term “crisis,” that means something is wrong. Polls in the real world, where many of us live, indicate a solid majority (more than 60%) of Americans support Single Payer, with a similar percentage of physicians and nurses concurring.

Congressman Mike, on the other hand, dismissed the twenty folks that appeared in the middle of a workday to stand along Highway One promoting healthcare for all. He said something like, “Look, there’s only twenty people out there, and the numbers go way down from there.” (Sweet Jesus, give me the strength….)

Petra was right, Mike Thompson is an embarrassment. As Mike rambled on, he started doin’ that pseudo folksy shtick that Republicans “flat out” perfected during the Bush era, where they start droppin’ their g’s (providin’, payin’). Apparently, this makes voters want to have a beer with you. It is all so stupid it makes you want to cry. 

With Democrats like this who needs Republicans?

It’s time to give Mike an ultimatum: either co-sponsor HR 676 (Single Payer) or lose our vote. That’s all the leverage we have with this guy. He’s coming up for re-election next year, and the medical industrial complex is already busy featherin’ his nest (see opensecrets.org). Twelve years of non-representation is enough.

Nancy Pelosi says, “Over and over again, we hear single payer, single payer, single payer. Well, it’s not going to be a single payer.”

How do you like that? Nancy’s tired of hearing what the people want.

It sounds to me like Nancy’s getting a little too complacent. As Republicans drift further into irrelevance, Democrats, spinelessly filling the void, are beginning to feel invincible. What we’re left with is Republican Lite: Compassionate Corruption.

Max Baucus, the Democratic senator given charge of healthcare reform, pounds his gavel and calls for the police to arrest citizens asking why single payer remains absent from the discussion. It’s a good question: Why is the best answer to the healthcare crisis being completely ignored? Most politicians won’t tell you the real answer, which is money. They are bought, and they do as their masters tell them. Master says, “keep single payer off the table,” and they do it. Max, like our very own Representative Mike Thompson, has been well greased by the health/insurance industry.

The parable of the financial meltdown is illuminating. Wall Street implodes in unregulated greed. Government bails out Wall Street with taxpayer money. Wall Street uses that money for retreats and bonuses (“rewarding excellence”), and hands some of it back to government. Government takes the bribe and continues legislating on Wall Street’s behalf.

Somebody’s getting screwed (see mirror).

We need to remove money from politics. Let’s outlaw all political contributions, period. Public servants earn a salary and that’s it, no more bribery. While we’re at it, let’s scale back some of their perks (remember, we’re supposed to be the boss here). For instance, I propose that public servants receive the exact same healthcare package that any newborn gets in this country (currently, bubkes). If this were the case, healthcare would get reformed in a hurry.

Now the reason politicians feel compelled to raise endless amounts of money (besides greed and corruption) is to finance their campaign commercials. The 30-second ad has become the essential campaign tool for the television age. The more money you have, the more ads you can run, the better your chances of winning. These short ads are marketing pieces (commercials), usually negative, whose primary purpose is to manipulate, not inform. We need to outlaw all these campaign commercials, which only serve to elevate the candidate with the most money and the least scruples.

Instead, media outlets should be required to donate a certain amount of airtime during campaign season to intelligent political debate, where all candidates can openly discuss the issues. This way, any competent citizen could run for office, regardless of wealth, and have an equal chance at winning. Money should not be the mitigating factor in politics.

If we let greed continue to run things in this country, I don’t think we are long for this world. Greed is selfish in nature. Money has no conscience. The “invisible hand of the market” does not consider consequences beyond profit.

We can do better. We need to do better.

It’s time for revolution. Big money stole America, and it’s time to take the country back. But first, it’s important to understand who and what we’re up against.

One of the usurpers, Grover Norquist, expressed the goal in graphic terms: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” He is part of the gang who subverted the “conservative” movement, the Republican Party, and the corporate media in this country. Their first puppet was Ronald Reagan, who helped popularize the simple-minded demonization of “big government.” Joe the Plumber is their latest tool.

But the real problem is not big government, it is bad government, which is what we have now. Washington has been thoroughly corrupted by big money. It serves the interests of corporations and extreme wealth at the expense of everyone else. This is not the American dream, it’s an American nightmare, and it is time to wake up.

Think about it: if you are rich and greedy, you don’t want to pay taxes for the public good. You send your kids to private schools, so you don’t care about public education. You can afford healthcare, no matter the cost, so you don’t care about universal coverage. Yes, it is stupid and selfish and short sighted, but that’s exactly who we are dealing with here. It’s time to stop the madness. America belongs to all of us, not just the rich. We’re all in this together.

The place to start is healthcare. Universal single-payer healthcare. Everyone in, everyone covered. Almost every other industrialized nation has it, but we don’t, because the rich don’t need it. They don’t care about you and me. So we have to stand up and fight for it.

There is a bill in Congress proposing healthcare for all. It’s called HR 676. It is the single best solution to the healthcare crisis in this country. It is, of course, opposed by the insurance and drug corporations, so they’ve been pouring money into Washington, to try and keep single-payer “off the table.” Thus far, their strategy is working. You hear the paid-off politicians speaking their lines.

How to fight back? Start with your congressional representative. Ask him or her to co-sponsor HR 676. If you live in California’s First District (the north coast region) your representative is Mike Thompson, who has not co-sponsored HR 676. Tell him to get on it (if you’re in Mendocino County, his number is 962-0933). We need to act in large enough numbers to counter the money he’s receiving from the industry. If he doesn’t respond, then let’s throw him out! That’s democracy at its finest.

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

That was Martin Luther King in 1967. 42 years later, I would say the approaching part is over. America is not only at spiritual death’s door, we’ve let ourselves in, gotten comfortable on the couch, helped ourselves to beer and pretzels, and have that glazed-over look we get when the Superbowl goes on too long.

At the time, King was addressing not only the Vietnam War but also the underlying reasons for America’s misguided foreign policy. He recognized that unless we grappled with these deeper motivations, there would be many more Vietnams to come. And he wondered whether America was mature enough to do it.

Well, the good news is that America is finally mature enough to elect itself a black president. This is certainly cause for celebration, but racism was only part of the problem King spoke of. He also identified materialism and militarism, and noted how America’s violence-prone foreign policy was often guided by naked concerns of wealth and investment. 

Naomi Klein’s recent book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism does an excellent job of looking at America’s international meddlings and illuminating their base economic interests. Assimilating the truths of her work will be America’s first step away from the spiritual death that King warned us of so many years ago.

A look at the “Health Care” section of the “Open for Questions” feature at change.gov reveals a powerful desire from American citizens for single-payer healthcare. An overwhelming majority of the comments on healthcare, numbering in the thousands, asked for essentially the same thing: single-payer (or HR 676). The ratio of yes/no votes on these comments ran about 20 to 1 for single payer. This indicates that the disinformation machine from the insurance/pharma industries is losing its grip on the public. I credit the movie “Sicko” for much of this awareness (if you have not seen “Sicko,” now is a good time). 

I think we are on the cusp of a great battle, essentially between the ascendant plutocracy (governance by the wealthy) and that silly old dream of democracy (governance by the people), and I see the healthcare crisis as representative of this larger struggle. 

For more than seventy years, base money interests (currently in the guise of health insurance and big pharma) have prevented us from adopting the vastly superior single-payer system. The rest of the world has benefitted from this simple concept, but America has not. We lag behind — paying more, getting less, becoming sicker — so a greedy few can continue enriching themselves at the expense of the many others. It’s been an obscene development in this country, and is a direct result of the ideology that puts profit before people.

The majority of American people (and physicians) want single-payer but an extremely wealthy, self-interested minority does not, and thus far they have managed to have their way, because big dollars mean big influence in government. Many Americans have suffered, and many have died, as a result. The for-profit “health” industry continues pumping vast sums from their ill-gotten gains into government, and HR 676 continues to languish — stuck “in committee” — in the House of Representatives.

For those of you in California’s First Congressional District, you should know that your representative, Mike Thompson, has not yet co-sponsored HR 676 (93 reps have, and he’s had years to do it). A quick look at his campaign finances (opensecrets.org) reveals that the “health” industry was a major contributor to his recent re-election, which most likely explains Mike’s reticence to support HR 676. PACs usually have candidates sign “position papers” before the money passes hands, and it is easy to imagine this one saying something like, “I will not support the single-payer solution.” This all-too-common example of concentrated wealth wielding disproportionate influence in government is probably the single greatest impediment to true democracy in this country, and we need to eradicate it from our system.

Tell your representatives (House and Senate) to support HR 676. Tell Obama the same thing (change.gov). Speak up. Join the millions who are trying to turn this ship around. It will take a lot of voices to overwhelm the money interests, but the numbers are in our favor — we only have to use them. 

Let’s take this country back.