As Unpopular as it May be…

I know that my stance on the health care bill and what just happened in Massachusetts is quite unpopular with certain segments of the liberal/progressive community. That being said I want to go on record as saying that I am glad the Democrats lost their 60-seat majority. And I hope that fact kills the Senate bill as written.

I also want to say that I am looking at this whole health care debate from the perspective of my five year-old grandson. I want to make sure that if we are going to give a huge amount of debt to the succeeding generations, they are at least getting what they want. And make no mistake, regardless of what the CBO says, or the members of Congress say it is going to be more expensive than they say it is. They always do accounting tricks to hide the true cost. (A practice I think should stop as well).

This bill is not reform in any sense of the word. If you read the Senate bill you will see that what it does is institutionalize the status quo with one major difference: We will be handing 33 million new customers to the insurance companies to deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions, (I know that technically it is supposed to, but this bill allows the insurance companies to price them out of the market), charge outrageous sums for their sketchy, at best, services, and abuse as they do now. And we will do all that while handing them, who knows how much, in subsidies.

When the American people put in a majority in the House, a Super-majority in the Senate, and a Democrat in the White House, they gave the Democrats a mandate to move this country to the left. After all, we gave what we thought was total control to the Democrats, and they are, after all, on the left in politics.

As far as many others and myself are concerned, the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress have either left the status quo, or moved to the right. They kept the status quo of the right as far as the bank bailouts go. They have kept the status quo of the right about how DC works and have shown that the Republicans, even though they are in the super-minority, still call the shots. And they have moved to the right of even Cheney on the Afghanistan War.

Democrats and President Obama have turned their backs on the very people that gave them the super-majority and got President Obama elected. It was the left and the center-left that put them in power. Not the right or the center-right.

What is the path forward for the Democrats? Well here are a couple of suggestions: Pass a bill that ends the anti-trust exemption for the health care industry. There is no earthly reason why they should have that. And if the Republicans protest, frame it that they are voting against free enterprise.

The last poll I saw said that 2/3 of the American people wanted a public option. So set up a national exchange with a public option. And if you then made it mandatory that every American buy into this exchange, it would be a lot more palatable to those that don’t want a mandate. And set this up to take effect now. The people need reform now, not in 2013.

Fund a public works program of some sort. That is what helped get us out of the depression and it will work now. If you can get the unemployment rate to start going down, or even just show to the American people that you are trying to lower it, they will support you.

Part of this could be funded with a tax on the upper elite. They have benefited for years from the very policies that caused us to be in the situation we are in now, and they should do their part to get us out. Go back to the taxes we had in the 30’s; 95% over a certain base income. I would propose to tax anything over $1 million for single incomes and $2 million for families around 90% as well, no deductions. This would do a couple of things. It would cause the executives at these companies to take things like stock options in lieu of salary and bonuses. They would have to plan for the long-term health of the company, instead of the get-rich quick culture we have now. It would also force these executives to put the money that would have been going for bonuses and salaries, back into the company or into new enterprises.

Put back into place the regulations that were put in place after the Great Depression to keep from happening what happened last year.

And last, but certainly not least: If the Republicans and/or the conservative Democrats threaten to filibuster, let them. Let them stand up there on the Senate floor and read from the phone book or whatever else they want, to keep the legislation from moving forward. Republicans are basically bullies. How do you keep from being bullied? You stand up to them. I can guarantee that if the Democrats would stand up to the Republicans and force them to actually filibuster, they would end the practice of always threatening a filibuster. And if they did go through with the filibuster, the American people would see how and who is stopping all legislation from going through. I can also guarantee that the vast majority of Americans would support the Democrats in all of this.

If the Democrats do these simple things I have outlined here, doing what the people of this country want, the vast majority of Americans will support them and it will show in the polls. Of course they are going to have to find a set of balls to stand up to their corporate masters like that.

If you ever have any doubt about how you should vote, or what you should support, use the corporate-ocracy test. In the corporate climate of today, if it is good for the corporations, it is bad for the American people.

What happened in Massachusetts is but a mere prelude to what is going to happen nationally in 2010 if the Democrats insist on continuing down the path they are on now.