…Estimable S.F. Chron columnist Jon Carroll’s insightful take:
“Let us concede that the insurance companies control the health care debate. They are the ones that profit from the current system; they are the ones with the money to hold the fundraisers for the legislators who will vote on the final bill. And – because the insurance companies are not dumb – the final bill, whenever it comes out, will have reform-like aspects. Not actual reform, but pretty little baubles that look like reform until you peer at them through a jeweler’s loupe.”
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That about sums it up. The Golden Rule of Politics controls our political system once again: He who supplies the gold makes the rules.
If the American people want to change this system, the best way to do it is to change into a democracy– rather than the plutocracy we now have. That is, we need to make corporate campaign contributions illegal, and to have all Congressional and presidential campaigns paid for solely by taxpayers. It would be a zillion times cheaper in the long run to do it this way.
Giant corporations and other special interest groups now supply the “gold” for Congress through campaign contribtuions. As a result, their lobbyists literally write the legislation that is supposed to be regulating their industries. The fox gets to guard the henhouse over and over. No wonder we have severe unsolved problems, including health care and a mess in the financial system.
If taxpayers supplied the gold– and also searched for and elected pragmatic honest dedicated people who want to solve the whole nation’s problems, — then we taxpayers could make the rules and get a lot of problems solved. Right now our system’s structure makes sure that we instead give the power to people who only want to solve their special interest group’s problems.
The idea that Congress could possibly put the interests of the public over money is ridiculous. Yes, they could. And any of them who do will not be re-elected because they don’t have the funds to finance their re-election campaigns. The system itself, as currently sturctured, insures this. Honest dedication to public service is severely punished in Congress. No wonder we don’t have much of that.
We elect our members of Congress with an albatross around thier necks– the problem of how to finance their future campaigns. If they can’t do that, they lose their jobs. Expecting them to ignore the albatross is absurd. Let’s take it off of their necks so that we can elect people who are problem solvers, statesmen and stateswomen, rather than continuing to elect only fund raisers who have no loyalty to anyone other than their sources of funds.
I heard Obama say from the begining, “First thing we are going to do is kick all the lobbists off the hill”. What ever happened to that idea?
Point of purchase tax, instead of “lets punshing those who actually have a job”, income taxes in order to fund all this nonsence. Dealers to dead beats and everyone in between, contribute nothing to the costs of doing business. The funds raised using a point of purchase tax would shadow the Income Tax method a thousand fold. Everybody pays, Equally.
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