Hug a Politician...Just Make Sure to Shower Afterwards.

"My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference." - Harry S. Truman

 

The one thing that I really love about this country is that our elected officials truly represent us, the people.  They put there own self interests aside and never let big corporate money influence how they vote.  Our politicians do what is best for us and believe with all there heart that if they are meant to be re-elected, they will be!  They give of themselves and…Ok, I’m sorry, I just cant keep a straight face here while saying such utter bullshit!  I tried, really I did.  You see, there is an old saying that goes power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.  There have been many examples of this through out history, Saddam Husain, Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Milosevic.  These leaders were monsters and there own power and actions are what eventually led to there ultimate down fall.  In this country we are fortunate to have a system of checks and balances that would never let a Stalinist type leader ever come into power but that does not mean that our leaders do not abuse the power they have.  The problem is that most of the time, the power they abuse is within the letter of the law. They work within our inherently flawed system.  Fortunately for us, if we do not like what our leaders as a whole have done, we can vote them out of office.  We are not stuck with them until they die, unlike the citizens of Cuba, North Korea or Arizona. 
 
You might be wondering to yourself at this point, what the hell is he getting at?  Well what I am getting at is this.  As a private citizen, I have learned a hell of a lot over the last few months watching our House and our Senate go through the process of debating health care and I have concluded that if this is the way most of our bills are decided, if this is how things are run in our hallowed government halls, in which most of us pay little attention to, even though we have more access to it, and more ability to have direct influence over our legal process then at any other time in our history, then to put it simply, we are all collectively screwed.  And by all, I don’t mean just all Progressive Democrats, I mean all of us.  While we would like to think that the power is in our hands because we can vote, and we can make calls, and we can e-mail and sign petitions, the real power, the absolute power that has corrupted our government truly lies between the corporations, the lobbyists and our elected officials who, when it all comes down to it, care more about increasing there bank accounts so that they can get re-elected, and the perks they are given in the form of vacations and hand outs, then simply doing what is the best for there constituents.  And it does not matter whether it is a Republican, a Democrat or an Independent, most of them get into power and it is not long before they are corrupted by the power they are given.  Sure there are exceptions to this rule such as Senators Al Frankin, and Bernie Sanders. Senator Sanders of Vermont has proven that you can vote your conscience and be true to your constituents and get re-elected with out being owned by corporate interests.
 
The facts are this, and I repeat these are facts.  This is not my opinion, or a Democratic point of view.  Poll after poll of average Americans from June of 2009 until today, taken by independent sources, consistently show that most Americans favor a Public Option being included as part of the Health Care reform bill, a bill that will be presented to President Obama, at the exceedingly rushed pace that is it being pushed through, so that the President can stand before the nation at his State of the Union address later this month and declare the great thing he and the Democratic Party has done to reform our health care insurance.  I repeat, most Americans consistently favor a public option.  So have the members of the House and the Senate done there jobs and represented the people of this country as they were elected to do?  Have they listened to there constituents and made sure that a public option will be in there bills, because that is what most Americans want to see?  To give credit to our House of Representatives, the answer is yes, they did.  They presented a bill that includes the Public Option.  It was, except for one Republican, an entirely Democratic effort, but they did.   But the Senate, on the other hand, has demonstrated on both the Republican and Democratic sides that there self interests, party lines, and the interests of the corporations that pay them millions of dollars each year in campaign contributions, and not the interests of the people they represent, are what matter to them.  The Democrats in the Senate bought and sold there votes.  They made bargains to get the sixty votes needed to pass, that if done on the State level would be investigated as pure bribery.  They ignored what the people want and made this into a game in which only themselves and the corporations that control our health care will win, and we as a people will all loose.  The Republicans were not much better, but they do not control congress.  They do not currently have the power to do what ever they g-d damn want to. But they could have one-upped the Democrats by showing us that at least they had the moral high road, but they didn’t.  They could have ignored party lines and voted strictly there conscience, like the one Republican in the House, Rep. Joe Cao of Louisiana did, but time and time again I have watched the Republicans in every vote since the Democrats took power vote strictly on party lines. And if this is how our laws get passed, if no matter who we elect, our representatives can just be bought and sold, if the only thing that matters on both sides is party lines, and how much the corporation that has the most too lose pays the politician that can help them gain the most, then we are all screwed and it does not matter if you are Republican or Democrat.  The game will never change. The Democratic Party has the power.  They have the choice on how to use that power.  They have a choice to represent there constituents, or not.  They have a choice to help people who really need the help, or not.  They have a choice to make real change for this country that will really matter for decades to come, or not. And they have made there choice.  They have a choice as to who they are going to truly represent with this power.  The Democrats in the Senate have chosen not to represent the people that got them elected, the people they represent, the people who can get them re-elected…or did they?