government by lobby
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009It looks like health care reform is headed for the rocks. I dunno, maybe they’ll patch some bogus thing together along the lines of the credit card reform bill, and call it a day. It’s disappointing, but sadly enough is to be expected. It doesn’t matter that before the giant Wurlitzer got cranked up fully 76% of the American people thought health care reform was something desirable – or that similar majorities think the war in Iraq was a waste of time, with the war in Afghanistan also following suit.
Both policies continue on unabated by popular public opinion because in both cases, the policies are being legislated not so much by the representatives, but by the lobby industry. Last year alone special interests spent over 3 billion dollars on lobbyists – more than than any year on record. There are currently now over 35,000 lobbyists working in Babylon on the Potomac – more than any year on record. Almost a full half (43%) of legislators that leave government take up employment as lobbyists. Not bad considering that we’re experiencing the worst economic conditions since the great depression, as government service is transformed into into a revolving door business enterprise. That has not only managed to solicit a copious river of money – with over 500 million washing over the capital from the health care industry alone, and over 50 million going directly into their individual campaigns (in 2008) – but have also devised a system insuring future employment working the same set of connections and influence from the other side.
From this perspective, government is simply the facilitator and mediator of the needs of business, industry, and finance who receive legislation pre-conceived and written by them to be worked out in the details of compromise in caucus and committee. For which they are rewarded with money and more money in the future. Where the functional success, benefit to constituents, or moral imperatives of the legislation are simplistic incidentals. It doesn’t matter whether 50 million Americans are at grave risk without access to health care, the local economies are in collapse, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan go on forever, as long as the people wielding the real power are satisfied.
In the end it doesn’t have to make any sense.
Because it is the project of the spectacle to churn out an endless conveyor belt of neologisms and narratives designed to make it appear to make sense.
Update:
Jane Hamshire at FDL has a health care post that reveals a new AARP poll, that says 78% of Americans would like to be able to purchase health care from the government, should they not be able to afford it from private insurers – the so called “Public Plan”.
The post then goes on to quote parts of a relevant Malcom X speech – “Don’t Be a Chump” – in part:
“…..These Northern Democrats are in cahoots with the Southern Democrats. They’re playing a giant con game, a political con game. You know how it goes. One of them — One of them comes to you and makes believe he’s for you, and he’s in cahoots with the other one that’s not for you. Why? Because neither one of them is for you, but they got to make you go with one of them or the other. So this is a con game. And this is what they’ve been doing with you and me all these years……”