March 19, 2010

Mr. President:  I remember you railing against lobbyists and Washington ways

when you were a candidate and I thought at first we might see change.  But then,

Sir, you decided to forgo public campaign money which limited private funding

and I began to wonder.  Now I am certainly not saying there is any connection, but

so far it seems as if, on every major issue, the lobbyists have won.

The basic idea of a lobbyist implies a private interest inimical to the general

public good, for if the two were the same, the lobbyists would become

redundant.  No surprise then that the public rallied behind your banner.  And it is  

the same issue that has caused many to be disillusioned for their perception of

this administration’s policies implies a volte-face.

On health care reform, the bill to be voted on in the House this Sunday will bring

in an additional one-third trillion dollars into the coffers of insurers through its

mandatory insurance provision.  If the public does not support this bill perhaps it

is because it rewards the people who have made illness a living hell for many.  If

the bill fails, then given the recent premium trends, the insurers are likely to

make even more money.  They win both ways.  And hospitals, now run as

monopolies in local markets by for-profit corporations, have raised prices

astronomically in the last decade.  What happened to the Medicare-for-all single-

payer plan favored by a vast majority of the public?  A new research report

produced by the California Nurses Association shows such a plan would even be

a stimulus for jobs.  Well, we are told it is not feasible.  Apparently our democracy

no longer responds to the will of the people.

In the banking crisis we have now spent $700 billion on the Troubled Asset Relief

Program (TARP) plus $1.25 trillion on the Quantitative easing program with the

Fed using ex nihilo money to transfer toxic assets to its own balance sheet while

rewarding the perpetrators of this financial meltdown.  These assets are likely to

be forced on Freddie and Fanny eventually.  Why could we not have put the

major banks through FDIC interventions so the worthless assets could have

been written off and used the money being spent to rewrite the homeowners’

mortgages at current home prices — the expertise at Freddie and Fanny would

have eased the administrative burden.  The homeowners would have been happy

— fewer would have lost homes — and the banks, without the toxic assets

hanging over them, would have started lending.  Instead our banks are off

gambling again.  So much so that the Prime Minister of Greece came all the way

here to complain about their behavior.  Wouldn’t reinstating Glass-Steagall have

stopped it?  One could ask if that is not in the public good instead of having to

bail out the same culprits in different guises.  I write this as another trillion

bailout is on its way to cover second liens.

The public are both weary and angry.

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