Business as usual... (sigh)

As 2009 prepares to come to a close, I'm reflecting on the word trajectory. I've heard it used quite a few times this year in regards to a number of issues confronting the country. The economy, war efforts, and healthcare are just a few of the areas that have had this term used in describing their pathways of progress or lack thereof. So how unfortunate that when the term usually describes a pattern of ascent or descent that a look at our current political system that promised such a hopeful commitment to change, has turned out to have such a mind-numbingly flat trajectory...

The great society of the new millenium heralded by the deposition of the horrific bush-cheyney dictatorship as the people rose up to elect a hopeful new intelligent leader has proven to be a lot of the same old-same old. Two needless-useless wars continue; the rich continue to get richer while the poor get poorer; personal freedoms continue being abridged; the idiotic fringe remains unchecked in their support of suicidal issues like zero gun control; and corporations increase their control of government while seeking to become a new classification of lifeform with rights that supercede those of any living organism: human, animal, or plant...

The greatest example of the latter is the healthcare debacle. We thought we had a President with a commitment to real change that would involve putting the best interests of the people of this nation first but alas it really is business as usual. First, he continued the insane policy of giving hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars without any strings to the very banks and other financial institutions who created the our economic crisis and who flatly refused to channel those funds back into the economy to keep millions of people from losing their jobs so that these latter day robber barons could regain their obscene profits. Then he promoted and listened to a military leader, Gen. Stanley McCrystal, who had already shown his unfitness for the post by carrying out a major scandal along with the previous administration in the attempted cover-up and misuse of the death of Cpl. Pat Tillman by friendly fire.

In between, President Obama undertook a historic mission to overhaul the healthcare business and provide something that initially over 70% of the public supported -- a system of universal healthcare for all Americans. A no-brainer that now appears to reflect the possibility for the greatest windfall profit in US history. No public option, no expansion of Medicare, and no penalties for denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, but mandated healthcare insurance purchases with penalties for non-compliance. Instead of universal healthcare, this would be forced healthcare purchases for 30 million people from the same unregulated health insurance cartels that would charge 17% of the income of households making less than $88K per year.

No wonder that now only 37% of the public supports this latest plan which the administration has curiously permitted to morph into this giveaway to the health insurance industry. An industry which by the way contributes absolutely nothing to actual health care. So the only winners here are the Cigna's, Blue Crosses, Aetna's, and United Healthcare's as this administration is now caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Pass this bad legislation and the insurers win big, or do nothing and let the republicans and the insurers claim victory while the President looks ineffectual. That type of impotence is a lot more of the same from democrats who currently control both Congress and the White House...

Well, there is a third option... Use the power of the ballot that was bestowed upon you in the last election and use the reconciliation procedure to pass the original legislation that we the dominant majority of people prefer. Forget this notion of compromise when your opponents both within and without your party have shown that they have no interest in. Do what's right for the people of this nation and defy the corporate entities that would be dictator kings. Be a democratic party that shows a backbone, a real spine, and show us a new trajectory for this nation or at least one that hasn't been experienced in over 30 years. Something, anything, other than business as usual...