Jimmy Lohman: No Medal for Olympia Snowe

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
by Jimmy Lohman

There is nothing especially heroic about voting to provide better health care to the American public -- especially when you represent the predominantly Democratic state of Maine where a large majority of voters favor the President's plan. So you won't be hearing any praise for Olympia Snowe over here.

It might have been a little courageous had Sen. Snowe broken with other Republicans and actually worked to get the bill passed, and not simply announced her begrudging qualified support for it the day it came to a vote in committee. But Republicans don't engage in leadership -- only in griping and complaining incessantly that people with nothing are a burden on the people with everything.

In her speech this afternoon announcing her decision to vote for passing the pathetically watered down bill out of the oligarchic Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Snowe felt compelled to note: "I have shared my Republicans' concerns (sic) about vast governmental bureaucracies and governmental intrusions."

This is about as disingenuous and specious a statement ever delivered, even for a member of the Senate Finance Committee.

"Vast governmental bureaucracies," Senator? When is the last time you voted against a defense bill? A war? A prison budget? A bill to lengthen prison sentences for non-violent crimes? Did you not consider the so-called "PATRIOT Act" a governmental intrusion?

Republicans are against "government intrusions" and bureaucracies only when they threaten corporate profits. Government programs that help people have always been opposed by the Republican Party, and that includes Social Security and Medicare that they fought against tooth-and-nail precisely as they are fighting today to protect parasitic insurance companies and the obscene pharmaceutical industry.

The Democrats still have a lot to learn about using language effectively and framing public policy debates in terms that are persuasive rather than counterproductive. Terms such as "public option," as Bill Maher notes, sounds more like someplace to go to the bathroom. The real issue here is whether grotesquely bloated private corporate interests will continue to bleed the public to the vast detriment of our economic, social and physical health. Their stranglehold on Congress, including the entire Republican Senate caucus -- minus one -- is choking us to death.

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY

Jimmy Lohman is a musician and human rights lawyer in Austin, Texas, and an occasional contributor to BuzzFlash.com.

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