Death to Corruption
Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama are quite properly insisting, at least in public, that the Afghan rulers clean out the rampant corruption in their government if they expect billions in aid and thousands of troops to keep them in power.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Congress prances and poses through a parody of healthcare reform, all orchestrated by health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyists for their own benefit rather than yours or mine. In a similar charade, financial industry lobbyists are shaping legislation that will pretend to regulate them after they blew up our economy and ruined millions of lives with foreclosures, lost jobs, and bankruptcies.
If I were a country, I wouldn’t deal with a government like ours until it cleaned out its rampant corruption.
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PS: I wouldn’t deal with Microsoft, either. I noticed in writing this that the Spell Checker in Microsoft Word is a Republican, most likely a teabagger and a birther — it won’t accept Barack Obama.
Comment by Al — December 19, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
You forgot the orchestrations of SEIU, the NEA, UAW, assorted organizations lobbying in behalf of illegal aliens and various other supposedly altruistic organizations “to promote their own benefit rather than yours or mine.” The rest of the post is totally accurate.
Comment by JDP — December 20, 2009 @ 2:47 pm
Right. Let’s include them all. (To keep the post readably short, I confined my remarks to the biggest spenders; $600 million on healthcare reform). I must add, though, that the percentage of illegal aliens in the UAW would be vanishingly small — while the percentage of non-union U.S. autoworkers employed by foreign car companies in southern states would be very high. The SEIU would have some illegals, but if you look at the steeply declining number and percentage of union workers in America, you’ll have to admit that we’re rapidly replenishing our supply of huddled masses even without immigrants. Also, it’s been three decades since the lobbyists of organized labor have been able to shape legislation.
But thanks for inviting them to the party.
Comment by Al — December 20, 2009 @ 4:07 pm
We’ve been down this path before. You define lobbying power exclusively in terms of dollars, while I maintain that the power of organized labor lies in a combination of dollars and human (aka thug) effort–just like Saul Alinsky says it should be in my very own well-thumbed copy of Rules for Radicals. But all of that is beside the point now that we have–voila!– a new entitlement program. Nothing changes with passage of the new health care “reform” legislative turd. Nothing. There is no reform, insurance companies will make even more money than they have in the past, tort lawyers will reap new benefits, nobody knows what health care costs really are, the deficit will balloon and a congress down the road won’t have the guts to make a half-trillion dollars in medicare cuts as promised in the new law to keep things “deficit neutral.” The special backroom deals favoring selected groups of citizens in favored states at the expense of others to get this turkey passed are particularly disgusting. Once again: real change is impossible without truly competitive insurance markets and tort reform. I maintain proposals to do so will get honest bi-partisan support and we’ll finally get turd-free change we can all believe in. This law sucks and this congress sucks.
Comment by JDP — December 22, 2009 @ 9:26 am
You tell ‘em, JDP. No art critic could surpass your description of the healthcare reform bill — it’s as ugly as they come. And the same will be true for financial reforms. Why? Because those (along with oil) are the special interests that own the congress — not the unions, which have been dumped on by congress for over 25 years. So I’m agreeing with your conclusions, but keep your villains straight.
You and Saul Alinsky are my heroes.
Comment by Al — December 22, 2009 @ 6:11 pm