Mr. Smith Goes To Congress

We all know that the original version of this posting was the wonderfully populist old 1939 film "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington."  It is, the star, Jimmy Stewart, played the stalwart "true believer" in American democratic ideals.

In our modern day, we see something similar -- at least, something of a similar image.  Beyond the image of the new Tea Baggers in the House, however, there lies an unsettling and unseen further story.  With this posting, MeanMesa will, once again, drop off the cliff of tedious reality into the glittery world of our own fiction.  Join us as we watch Mr. Jack Smith, the recently elected Tea Bag Congressman from the fictional state of North Virginia on his first tour of the US House of Representatives.

Mr. Smith is accompanied on this tour by the senior Republican Congressman from North Virginia, Representative Billy "Bubba" Blowhard.  As we begin, it is Mr. Smith's first day at the Capitol.

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington

"Congratulations on your election, Jack.  It'll be great to have another real American from North Virginia in the 112th Congress.  I'm sure that Speaker Boehner is anxious to meet you and offer his own greetings, too.  Right now, though, it might be a good idea to show you around this place so you can get your bearings."

"Thanks Bubba!  I've already been shown my office by the House staff, but I've never had a chance to see the rest of the place."

"Well, I hope you've got your walking shoes on -- we've really enlarged the old House quite a bit.  There have been lots of additions just to accommodate the folks who moved in here with us."

"But Bubba, aren't there still the same number of Representatives?"

"Oh sure, but I was referring to the other folks we'll be needing to keep the wheels of government turning while we're in charge.  You know, before we took over to make government smaller and get rid of the special interests, we had to go all the way over to K Street to pick up our campaign contribution checks.  Since we're in charge now, we decided to just move all that closer to where the action is, if you get my meaning."

The pair were walking out of the House Chamber through a nondescript doorway located at the side of the Speaker's Chair.  The new Congressman was startled as they entered a long hallway which appeared to be three or four times longer than the House Chamber itself.  As he first glanced at the scene, it seemed that there were literally hundreds of doors opening to offices along the corridor.

"Wow, Bubba.  You guys really have expanded the House offices.  Are there Representatives in all these rooms?"

"Heh, heh.  No Jack, these are the new offices we've built for the K Street Mall additions.  We had to find room for a few thousands lobbyists who needed to come right up on the Hill so they could be a little more convenient for us.  There are so many offices in here that a new Congressman can get lost.  That's why I wanted to show you around.  You'll need to be able to find the right 'go-to' places once you start doing business."

"Bubba, it looks like there are more lobbyists here than there are voters in my District back home in North Virginia."

"Don't worry, Jack.  The leadership has prepared a little map which shows who's where.  Naturally, we didn't want the thing to go public, so we're only handing it out to the new Congressmen when we can do it quietly.  Here, take a look.  Right now, we are right here."

The senior Congressman pointed to a small spot at the right edge of the floor plan.

The "Secret Map" To the

 New "K-Street" House Mall 

(image source MeanMesa)

"Now, you can see the, uh, Market Trading Floor here in the center.  This list of offices goes by the numbers.  Just find the lobbyists you're looking for on the list, check the floor plan to see where they are and you'll be able to go right to the correct office."

1.  House Chamber  (Market Trading Floor)

2.  The Greed Grotto where members can go for quiet reflection.

3.  The "Media Images Classroom" where members can learn to speak bad English with a Southern drawl and wear bad ties.

4.  The "Big Pharma Patio" where members can slip in for a couple of drinks and get their "marching orders" from the Pharmaceutical Corporations.

5. and 6.  The "Back Room" where there are no cameras or microphones.  Members can have conferences here when they want to be sure that absolutely no one can see what they are doing.  Right next to the "Back Room" is the "Closed Door" where we can make deals with each other to serve the public interests and stuff.

7.  The "No Bid" Conference Room is for making contracts with military suppliers and the like.

8.  The "East Lobbyist Lounge" where our friends can gather to talk to each other.

9.  The "Emergency Supplemental Luncheonette" where we put together funding for unpopular stuff like wars and invasions.  They serve great sandwiches free to members.

10.  The "Big Bank Bar B Que Pit" where we authorize mergers for our special banking friends.  They serve fabulous ribs at the "Pit."

11.  Is the "ROI Market Ticker" office.  All the Lobbyists watch this pretty closely to make sure they're getting their bosses' money's worth.

12. through 18. These are the close-in offices for the our "Deregulation Services Administration."  The main "Deregulation Office" is just over there in room 44.  We make the "sweet deals" over in 44, then come along over here to work out the details.  You'll notice that we have a separate office for each kind of deregulation, oil, banking, Wall Street, Health Care and the like.  For example, Room 17 here is for pollution deregulation.

19. through 26. These are the "Deregulation Tax Specialties" offices where we go to work out the tax side of the changes we make while we are dis-assembling old "job killing" regulation bills, if you know what I mean.

27. through 31.  All the offices on the South Wing are dedicated to "Campaign Cash Management."  Now, although that might seem like something boring, it's at the heart of the entire mall.  Our Congressional "Money Bin" is in 28, and out "Citizens United Cash Memorial" is in 31, right on the corner with a great view of the Supreme Court.   We manage all the  conflict of interest payments to our boys on the Supreme Court in office 29.

32. Is the "West Side Lobbyist Dining Room."  Hey, everybody's got to eat!  

33.  The "Free Market Petroleum Lounge" is a kind of "freshening up" spot for our friends from the oil industry when they come to visit.  Sometimes, Big Oil leaves "campaign contributions" out on the reception table with the fresh fruit and candy.  Of course, members can help themselves.

34. through 38.  All these offices are where we manage our "International Accounts."  For example, "Off Shore Assets" are managed in 35,  and "International Special Friends" business is handled in 37.  Our favorite international "Military Contractors" are located in 38.  "Jet Liners, Tankers and Useless War Planes Sales" are in 36.

39. Is the "Member Spa and Whoopee Health Center" run by the health insurance corporations.  It's free, and it's private.  There are different girls in there every week.

40. Is a "Members-Only Alcohol and Drug Treatment."  Maybe you've wondered where in the hell we send all the members who fall down in front of the cameras on the Floor.  They just wander over there, and we report that they have entered treatment.  It's a good place to run into the Speaker.

41. through 43. These offices on the North Wing are all "Talking Points Management and Distribution Centers."  You will drop in here every morning before you have any public exposure.  The CATO guys and the Heritage Institute will have the day's list of talking points ready to go, and your job will be just slip them into any public statement you might make that day.  Just act like you have thought about whatever it is.  The media will be full of the same line no matter who is interviewed that day or the subjects.

44. Is the "House Hedge Fund and Holding Company Office."  That door will be closed to you unless you're invited in by the House leadership.

"So, Jack, there you have it.  Hang on to the little map, and make sure your staff knows where to go for what around here.  Now, have a great time, make some money and do the country's business!"

A New Idea: Talk To Me!

MeanMesa knows that there is no shortage of defeated resignation among citizens when they watch the Senate, time after time after time, debate matters which don't matter and then make deals with people who have no business dictating our lives. This situation will not be limited to what they have now successfully done to what used to be health care insurance reform -- it extends gleefully to banking regulation, cap and trade carbon legislation, Afghanistan, you name it.

The Senators are dancing on our check books. They are not embarrassed by their psychotic avarice. They care very little about what we might think of it. They have no intention to stop the practice.

They just keep looking at each other and, when there are no red faces or voices of Constitutional patriotism staring back, the mayhem gets even worse. More outrageous. More egregious. They have long since ceased considering what they might see on our faces.

In fact, all those far roaming, allegorical complaints about the absence of statesmanship among the denizens of that house of thieves grows more and more believable the longer we watch them. Is there no way to bring the Senate back to its far more noble tradition?

There might be.

We can begin by considering the popular definition of statesmanship. One ability included in the definition is debate. Statesmen should be persuasive debaters. For younger MeanMesa visitors who have never actually seen a debate, it runs like this. There is a proposition which is in contention between the sides of the debate, that is, an argument which has at least two possible conclusions.

The Traditional Meaning of Debate

The debate itself is an organized (there are rules and a structure which are enforced by a moderator...) chance for speakers from either side of the contended argument to try to persuade debate judges that they are "right" and the other guy, well, isn't. Of course, the debaters prepare for the session by studying all the information which might help them make their case and "cooking up" special parts of their arguments which they hope will be impressive to the judges.

One great benefit of debates when they are done this way is that everything comes out. The last thing one of the debaters wants is to be confronted by either some compelling information or something "cooked up" by his opponent. Because of this, debates are not solely decided on the validity of the information presented, but also on passion, the ability to think on one's feet (a feature which usually helps keep either side from outright lying...), confidence and speaking ability.

When all these traits are manifest on the floor of a debate, watch out because something interesting is about to happen.

The Senate's Meaning of Debate

Unhappily, there are debates and then, there are debates. When we see the grizzled face of a Senator on the News Hour, he will speak of "debate in the Senate." What he refers to is not very similar to what is described above. In the Senate, clerks and consultants have thrashed through every word of what will be said, fortressing the whole speech so not a single thing can become a "fish hook" for the other party. The resulting oration is usually a well greased, watered down mishmash with a couple of harmless "talking points" inserted here and there to satisfy the evening news.

All the really important communication does not rely on the "debate." It will be handled in back rooms with assistants and lobbyists. Lobbyists with checkbooks. The "floor debate" is intended for our consumption, even though no living human can endure much of what is offered. The only exception to this is that lobbyists can endure it. They will listen to see if their masters "got their money's worth."

Further, the Senators don't even speak to each other. They will all speak to a CHAIR which represents the President of the Senate. There is no "give and take" between Senators conducted anywhere that we might hear it. The "give and take" must be undertaken secretly -- usually in back rooms -- where bribery and corruption are not so embarrassing and no one outside the backroom can be certain about who was actually there.

That dismal picture is usually what is called "debate" in our United States Senate.

Other Interesting Senatorial Habits

When a Senator thinks about what we would ordinarily call a "debate judge," he will claim that his "debate" will be judged by the American citizens in his constituency. Now granted, any of us stupid enough to watch this old worm stagger through his prepared speech might emerge from the suffocating calamity with an opinion (about either the proposition or the Senator...), but there will be no "judging." The "judging" will be conducted when the Senate has a floor vote and all the other Senators -- who have also probably NOT listened to Old Senator Gas Bag's carefully crafted speech without "fish hooks" either -- will cast their ayes and nays as they have been instructed by their respective lobbyists.

When Senators appear on public media, they are allowed to say that a vast majority of the American people want precisely what the Senator wants them to want which usually turns out to be what their lobbyists want the Senator to want them to want. If that is a bit ponderous, then the theme has been accurately set!

For example, Senator McChinless from down south somewhere keeps saying that the American people don't want a public option in the health care insurance reform bill. Senator McChinless (he wears perfectly round eyeglasses...) knows that poll after poll says exactly the opposite, but he can continue to say over and over whatever he wants or whatever his lobbyists have told him to say.

And, Senator McChinless in the perfectly round glasses is not alone in this brazen prevaricating. Senator Botox Rat Face, also from down South somewhere, and Senator Happy Farmer from out in the midwest somewhere, all compete with each other to see who can say the most lies about "what the vast majority of Americans want." There are many others. The GOP has run out of any convincing ideas a decade ago, so these new "ideas" of theirs are presented over and over, even in the face of overwhelming contradicting evidence -- evidence that they are as unpopular with the electorate as unionized bed lice.

Ah, Satan's Garden of Human Delights is crowded with under-informed voters. The circus's center ring is orchestrated by Ohio's Orange Tan (not orangutan...) who eagerly recaps the lies of the others on his masters' wholly owned "news" networks.

Normally, such a bad habit would "catch up" to these wormy ScrewTapes sooner or later, but their masters have taken the precaution of purchasing the media. Because of this, all these liars can just "roar on ahead" as long as they please. Public sentiments mean nothing. Lobbyist checks mean everything.

But, this MeanMesa post is not about campaign finance reform. It's about debating.

This discussion would be remiss indeed if it neglected to mention the most favored Senate habit of all -- cloture. Cloture is the bastion of the filibuster. Without cloture, there can be no "debate" on the floor of the Senate. Conveniently, 60 of the Senate's 100 votes must be cast in favor at cloture hearings for proposed bills to reach the floor of the Senate for their subsequent "debate."

For example, in the matter of the health care reform bill, it is precisely this "cloture" which has required everything including the "kitchen sink" to be quietly negotiated away in hopes of avoiding a filibuster. The sagging fragment of what is left is now being blocked by the imposition of yet more arcane "Senate rules." When "cloture" is blocked, there can be no "debate." But wait, there wasn't really ever going to be be any "debate" anyway!

Now, there are those among us who believe that simply forcing the obstructionists to physically filibuster -- in other words, actually perform their "threat" -- would embarrass the miscreants enough to somewhat rectify the situation. MeanMesa doubts this. Republicans have taken great efforts to have "extra thick skin" and uninformed constituencies.

But what's left?

MeanMesa's Solution: Real Debates Where We Are the Judges

How would something like this actually work?

In the Senate there are clearly two identifiable "sides" at play in every case of proposed legislation. If our basic ideas both about the Senate and about debate are reasonable, those Senators should be happy to have an opportunity to "debate" the matter. This means actually debate, not the toothless masquerade we're accustomed to seeing on the Senate floor.

The rules of the Senate would remain in the Senate. No Senate rules would prevail in our new public debates -- they would be controlled by debate rules. The "sides" would be forced to argue their positions in oratorical combat with their opponents. They would be forced to say what those positions were and defend them. Constituents could watch these Senators hash out their best plans and ideas in a transparency beyond anything we have seen in our lifetimes.

Once the "gauntlet had been cast down," refusing to debate would be political suicide.

The voters watching the debate would have a chance to set their own opinions about what had been debated. If the voters viewing the debates concluded that one proposition was persuasive and then watched as the Senate enacted the opposite into law, voting choices would become obvious. Extremely obvious. Hopefully, frighteningly obvious!

The "sides" could challenge each other with "I dare you to stand in a public debate with this position of yours." The "sides" could agree on the precise proposition to be debated. No more artsy, clever "Gotcha" questions from over paid pundits! Real debates aren't "prompted" by a string of cutesy, trick questions. They are the battlegrounds for settling the proposition both "sides" agreed to debate. The winner captures the support of the voters.

Senate campaign "war chests" are based on the idea that we will vote for someone -- anyone -- if he can just buy enough television commercials, hence the reprehensible effect of lobbyist money. We can replace that old technique with real debates! Senator versus Senator, no holds barred, right on our television sets debating proposed Senate legislation, not simply promoting ill defined, gaseous generalities about "Change," "Peace," "Family Values," "Prosperity" or some other nonsense.

Yup. We're talking blood soaked specifics here. Let the sides select their speakers and take on the public option or single payer! Let the chosen orators support or disclaim increasing troop strengths in Afghanistan, spending stimulus money, regulating banks, capping carbon emissions or changing education policy. The mind-numbing cordiality of the Senate would be left in the Senate. The debate would be for the hearts and minds of the voters!

Real time!

The debates would no longer be a confusing act perpetrated under the out-of-date protection of the Senate. They would be acts of transparent democracy. Voter opinion -- not back room deals -- would become the final authority on matters such as "cloture" and "floor debates."

Centuries ago, the earliest democracies in ancient Greece and Imperial Rome were directed by exactly this approach. It is a tradition to which we should return. The reason ancient Athens attacked Macedonia was because Demosthenes convinced the Assembly! His Phillipics were so famous that we now find them in the Harvard Classics.

This reintroduction of active statesmanship would force the chosen Senators to present their arguments with clear statements, formal information and passion. The "majority of Americans want" crap would be instantly challenged if it were to be uttered in an active debate instead of the safe, painless isolation of a talk show interview. The statesmen would unavoidably emerge from the process. The hill billies, bigots, crooks and looters would be "sitting ducks" for the onslaught of the opposition, and we would have a chance to see all of it for ourselves.

Should this practice "catch on," even local elections would improve. Local candidates certainly would.

Cast in comparison with such great debaters as William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, this Senate sucks. MeanMesa is "done" with the lot of them.

It's going to be up to us to fix it.

Articles about what's going on in our Senate:
From BeltWay Blips (quoting Huffington Post)
http://beltwayblips.dailyradar.com/story/read-it-gop-senator-pens-obstruction-manual-for-health/
and from Emory University, Stanton Abramson, The Emory Wheel:

http://www.emorywheel.com/detail.php?n=27774

Health Care: Legislative “Firepower”

A call to action.

“There’s nothing better for morale than superior firepower.” Major Gerson Subotky, U.S.M.C. (1961) 105

Many of the Congressmen and Senators -- from both parties -- are presently reporting that constituent contacts, that is, letters, emails and phone calls, are running roughly even “pro and con” on the issue of health care insurance reform. This may seem unlikely given highly reputable public opinion polls which show Americans in favor of the reform at above 70%. How can this be?

Are these legislators lying about the message from the public arriving in their offices and switchboards everyday? Probably not. Much more likely our fellow citizens are presuming too much “democracy” in action. Get over it.

What we see is not “democracy” in action at all. The debate is between every corporate interest group currently benefiting from the existing health care scam and a bankrupt, unserviced populous suffering from their parasitic greed. The executives of those “health care” corporations are now screaming for the Congressmen and Senators they have carefully purchased to come to their aid.

The Congressmen and Senators representing us need a heavy duty infusion of "firepower!" And they need it now. Call them! Email them! Give them some "firepower" so they can represent your interests! Visitors to MeanMesa need to find the time to add their two cents to stopping this gang rape. The alternative is to submit peacefully to another fifty years of passive slavery.

Those executives, through their business groups (called “health care gangs”) are spending a reported $1.2 million per day to keep those “voter” phone calls coming. For the mathematically challenged, that is $1,200,000 per day, $84,000,000 per week, $366,000,000 per month. Don't ever underestimate what nasty, little, greedy monsters these guys are. Don't ever even think about believing the crap they are pumping out through the rancid mouths of their trained monkeys like Fox, Limbaugh and O'Riley.

Their $350 million a month effort has already moved "single payer" off the table, but those in the legislature with enough common sense, decency and self-preservation are still -- sort of -- trying to get the "public option" for us. Forty "bought and paid for" Republicans think that they can still decide the future of the country, even after they have soiled themselves "sucking teat " in the Bush autocracy, lost two elections and revealed what crooks they actually are every day since then.

Gosh! Where did they get all that money? The fact is that they have gotten LOTS MORE than the little dab they are spending to keep their PR schemes going, and they have gotten all that money from your health insurance premiums! They are wallowing in the cash they make by denying claims and screwing everyone with a pre-existing condition. Some health insurance chief executives are getting more than a billion dollars -- $1,000,000,000 -- a year to run those companies.

Uh, did you think that was a good deal?

They are buying radio and television time to ply their lies about the reform idea. Their commercials -- always an appetizing treat to the bigots, hillbillies and other crooks -- are a constant stream of inflammatory deceptions.

“Do YOU want a federal bureaucrat between you and your doctor?”
“The public option will mean health care rationing -- you know, like France!”
“The SO-CALLED reform measures will mean long waiting lines while you are dying of fatal illnesses!”
“If all the poor people get health care, it will BANKRUPT the country!”
"Public health care never worked in the socialist, European countries that have already tried it!"

Well, those bigots, hillbillies and crooks are flooding the phone lines, citizen. They have no idea what they are doing. They are simply responding to the expensive, half-witted poison of the health care corporations.

If you want them to decide about your health care, just relax and they will. On the other hand, if you think we can do better than what we’re doing now, get your ass on the phone, the emails, talk to your neighbor, write a letter to the editor. The choice is to either continue to pay $10,000 a year to these shysters or go without a chance of help if you get sick. Make your choice. You can sit there accepting the “bargain price” of whatever you’re paying now for the rest of your life -- by the way, health coverage costs are increasing steadily at the rate of 8% per year. But, even that is no problem if your wages are increasing at a higher rate. Uh, wait a minute, are they?

You can keep on “tempting fate” with the hope that you will never get sick. You can “man up” and “tough out” that heart attack or cancer or the little tumor which will take your house and bankrupt you. Does that sound like a good plan?

Then, DO NOTHING, and that’s what you’ll get.

Jump out of MeanMesa this instant! Call your Congressmen and Senators. Act in your own interest. You have the time to be a good citizen.

The Presidential Pardon Party -- Happy Holidays!

The last act of the strange dark drama in the White House?

Don't count on it.

Think of it as a office gift exchange. 74

Two almost identical young men stood waiting outside the Oval Office in a line with several dozen more, every one an almost perfect copy. All aspiring young attorneys from K Street or elsewhere, they seemed to have arrived from a call to central casting. The hair cut of each one was conservative, identically short and stylish. The well scrubbed, boyish faces all emphasized the overpriced, tailored suits and the multi-hundred dollar silk ties. The practiced mood of subdued reverence was one obviously mastered for missions such as this one.

“Are they doing this in alphabetical order?” the younger of the two asked, turning to face the man next to his position in the line.

His slightly older friend whispered an answer. “Sort of alphabetical, I guess. They started at about 10 AM with Jeb, Harriet Meiers and a list of secret pardons from Cheney. A big bound book of Wall Street names took an hour after that -- we’ll never know who was in there. They did Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham early this morning, than a bunch of rapid fire ‘B’s’ -- you know, Bolton, Blackwater, Blackwell, and Brownie, et cetera. Giuliani and Rumsfeld came as twin drag queens.”

“Michael Scanlon and Tom DeLay’s attorney were here early yesterday. But, after those two, they did Bob Ney and Ralph Reed. An attorney even got the gay guy, Gannon, pardoned. His lawyer didn’t have much of a cash bundle, so I figure they must have had a little dirt of some kind. I guess the male prostitution business isn’t so lucrative anymore.” he continued.

The door opened momentarily to discharge a small group of the previous supplicants. The line inched forward as another small group of the young attorneys entered. The younger of the two quietly peeked through the crack for a glimpse at what was awaiting him when his turn arrived.

The scene was a surreal theater.

All the normal furniture of the Oval Office had been removed, replaced with garish things suggesting screen props from an 1950’s version of Alice in Wonderland. The place was filled with potted ferns and roses. Geese, goats and gerbils seemed to be rushing around in the open area, each contributing its voice to the clamor. Providing background music, a quartet costumed as Cheshire Cats with banjos and harps struggled along with a faint timbre of what might have been some cheerful Transylvanian folk dance had it been produced with more suitable instruments.

A single drummer, dressed as the traditional hooded figure of “Death,” beat out a melancholy, yet consolidating rhythm on a solitary snare held by a suspiciously decorated leather strap around his neck and shoulder. His drumming seemed to inspire the animals, at least the geese, to attempt to synchronize their squawking with the beat.

The President was seated at one end of the room on an elaborate sort of medieval chair. He was dressed in a theatrical lime green tuxedo with tails. Obviously inebriated, even though still early morning, he slumped with the detachment of a depressed imperial indifference to the events in the room. He wore a great, green top hat, probably made of foam rubber, adorned with rhinestones and peacock feathers in a long flowing plume.

A troop of immense, bare chested wrestlers had just completed their performance. Staffers were hurriedly ushering them out the far door. A dance team of young women dressed as Vestal Virgins waited impatiently for a signal to begin the next entertainment act. Some had already begun to throw rose petals onto floor at the center of the room.

Several young men from the same waiting line were in the Oval Office moving respectfully around what seemed to be a Bush administration version of the “stations of the cross.”

Wide eyed, the young lobbyist attorney again turned to his more experienced acquaintance, puzzled. “What in God’s name is going on in there?”

His friend answered calmly. “Relax. If you’d been here last time, you would understand everything. I spoke to a guy from the Chief of Staff’s office yesterday. It seems that the Bush wanted to avoid the Berlin Bunker atmosphere for the pardoning ceremony. The President choreographed this whole thing himself.”

Again, the first young lawyer stumbled. “But what does all this mean?”

His acquaintance answered. “In 2004 the motive was the Crusades. This year, it’s the Mad Hatter. Didn’t your boss tell you anything about this?”

The younger man responded, glancing down at the huge suitcase of 1,000 Euro notes handcuffed to his wrist, “All he told me was to make sure that the currency counting machine was stopped after the batch before me before I put all these Euros in it. He said it might not look like it, but that the exact amount of cash was important. He said it was something like a contribution to the Presidential Library Fund or something.”

His friend offered, “Well, it’s good that you’ve got that part straight. What happens in the room is simple enough. You go directly to the Attorney General -- he’s the one dressed in the Supreme Court robes. He will give you a parking ticket with your boss’s name on it.”

“After that, you take the ticket to the tall guy over by the windows. He’s playing the role of the Great Confessor. He’s the one dressed up as a medieval abbot. He’ll ask you if your client wants to voluntarily confess to the charges on the ticket. He means your boss, of course. You raise your hand and say ‘Yes, Great Confessor. My client confesses that he is truly guilty as charged.’ At that point, all the judicial stuff is done.”

“Then put all your Euro’s in the currency counter in front of Paulson.”

He could see Secretary of the Treasury sitting on a great wooden throne, elevated above the remainder of the room. Costumed as an extravagant courtier, he was heavily made up with bizarre cosmetics. Flamboyant lipstick had enlarged the outline of his mouth to reach from ear to ear suggesting a threatening psychopathy. Every detail of the man’s appearance was darkly grotesque.

“Let his little elf there in front of the throne run all the cash through the counting machine. When it’s done, he will whisper the amount in Paulson’s ear. Paulson is the one made up as the Exchequer for the Queen of Hearts. They’ll throw your boss’s, uh, donation in that big pot, and the ‘Exchequer’ will nod at the President.”

Astonished, the first young lawyer asked, “And then?”

His friend answered, “And then the Mad Hatter will wave his hand and the bunch from the Justice Department will issue your boss’s blanket pardon. You want to slowly and reverently back away -- withdraw ceremoniously toward this same door. Bowing subserviently wouldn’t hurt.”

The newer man asked, “What’s the parking ticket’s part in all of this?”

His more experienced associate responded, “That’s important. Blanket pardons can’t be issued without an admission of guilt. Now, we both know that the exact details of the, uh, ‘guilt’ involved here could hardly bear the light of day, so confessing to the parking ticket is a way to cover everything. Think of it as a symbolic act of contrition. Once you confess in your boss’s behalf, the pardon becomes legal. Of course, it centers on the confession to the parking violation, but, once that’s in the bag, the blanket pardon covers everything else. Slick, huh?”

The young man whispered back, “This is nuts. Does anyone on the, I mean, on the outside have any idea what’s going on here?”

His friend answered, also in a low voice, “No, of course not. You’d better believe it’s better that way. This has been going on a for a couple of days now, but the news black out is holding. Murdoch and the rest of the media CEO’s are scheduled for later today.”

He continued, “I plan to record as much as possible on this belt buckle I got through the security screen. I’ll blackmail my boss if his pardon goes through. I’m sure he’s already budgeted enough to pay me off. After all, he is a K Street lobbyist, right?”

“Wow. I work for an investment banker. They’re a little meaner than K Street guys. You know, a little more violent and pragmatic.” He paused for a moment, clearly deep in thought, then continued. “Gosh. All these people getting pardons. They’ve been running everything for eight years.” He mused pensively. “If they’re all gone, you know, pardoned and everything and gone on back to their regular lives, who’s going to run the government?”

This post proves that pardons can be fun! If you'd like to try it yourself -- with just a few actual facts -- link away!
http://news.muckety.com/2008/11/27/in-final-days-bush-likely-to-pardon-more-than-turkeys/7551

Health Care Without the Lipstick.

Another MeanMesa Lipstick Commentary! This time HealthCare!63

A little history.

As Americans, our intuitive, aggregate concept of “health care” has become, gradually, and perhaps, unavoidably, more and more complicated, more and more unexamined and more and more incomprehensible as it slowly transformed itself to present a new, modern phenomenal definition. Things have been “added” to it.

Entrepreneurial opportunities have been identified, encouraged, injected and groomed in ways which inevitably transformed it by indulgences easily betrayed by modest semantics. Masterful commercial psychology has successfully contaminated both our interest and our expectations in ways that have converted an older, more rational approach to a modern frenzy of insistence, liability and other barely manageable (again, codependent) demands.

Fifty years ago the United States was enjoying the tangible benefits of being a culture which was not burdened with resurrecting itself from recent military destruction. The proletariat economy was literally awash with good paying jobs and a highly visible population, consequently, endowed with remarkable -- at least by global comparisons -- discretionary wealth. Lingering atop this frothy “three tiered wedding cake” was the fairly widely accepted proposition that the system at play here was “the very best in the world” with respect to all sorts of things.

What kinds of things? To name only a few, our new hegemonic military; our ICBM’s, our industrial productivity, the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of our citizens, the proclaimed freedom of religion and the arguably hypnotic luxury of a vast, barbecue pit, martini drenched social extravagance. Naturally, human beings lived a bit longer in such a place. Overlooking clean water, fresh air, plenty of food and even “pretty good shoes,” we quite comfortably attributed that good fortune to our health care. Why not? It was, after all, “the best in the world.”

Doctors here had entered a developmental phase predicated on the idea that going to school longer meant earning more afterward. Hard classes, harder cash. What had previously been best described as a comfortable livelihood was reinventing itself into an economic opportunity able to compete with a new populist conception of the old robber barons.

The religionists had done very well promoting their famous “death fear,” that is, the proposition that one, by willingly servicing religion’s economic avarice in life, might have an edge at the Gates of Judgment. The militarists franchised a bit for themselves as they maximized the contemporary (and well remembered) advantages of war’s horror to extract resources dedicated to Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex.”

Interestingly, the doctors were able to also promote their own, small franchise enabled by the same happy neurosis.

“Death fear.” Our interest in controlling as much of this inevitable calamity as possible began to direct our entire economy and our cultural psychology. The religionists promised intercessionary comfort from the hands of the blindly retributive divinity. The militarists promised protection from premature death resulting from violent military aggression here before more acceptable forms of demise. The doctors promised defense from the risk of premature death resulting from preventable or remedial assault by bacteria, viruses and traditional homo sapien system failures.

Health care was slowly redefined from its original purpose. What had once been the hope of “curing what ailed me” became a promise to “live longer.” Although this change was an undetectable subtlety in any specific visit to the family’s physician, the big picture of medicine was becoming enthralled with the prospect of being able to make much greater promises and, as a result, engorge ever larger amounts of the cultural resources. This was the first new addition.

Likewise, our penchant for controlled results subcontracted a growing part of the promises of the doctors’ new found franchise to the compensatory notion of paying for failed promises. Malpractice, although hardly a medical treatment, injected itself into the already heady brew of unrealistic expectations and codependent demands for controlled outcomes. Previously, the successful treatment of some malady was accepted as a happy serendipity. Aside from outright malfeasance, with this next, new addition, medical success could finally embrace the psychotic notion that recovery was the only “fair” outcome of treatment, moving anything less to a status not dissimilar from “breach of contract.”

A third addition was the new idea of directing research toward the most marketable styles of medical problems. There is no way to speculate if the development of Viagra retarded discovering the cure for skin cancer as it diverted research cash, but Viagra is by no means the only distracted target and skin cancer is, equally, by no means the only possibly neglected, alternate break through.

The social culture had delivered all sorts of drugs and treatment regimes to the doctors as it slowly moved away from the heroin and cocaine saturated elixirs of the early 20th century. Once it became clear that a certain treatment advantage might be gained from a more educated dispensing of, say, antibiotics the die was cast. Another addition. Immediately attached to that treatment advantage came a franchised, statutory and dependable addition to direct income. Big. Direct.

In Tijuana or Juarez anyone with enough pesos can simply purchase antibiotics from a pharmacist. The right pharmacists might even offer a suggestion as to selecting the right one. The statutory self-preservation aspects of the doctor franchise will probably prevent you from legally bringing them back to the United States. Antibiotic outcomes are better here with the statutory insistence that they be dispensed by a medical doctor and blanketed by the liability promises made possible by our appetite for compensated malpractice. Those outcomes falter a bit when they include the outcomes of those who must simply suffer without any unaffordable care.

Perhaps the next addition is the idea that, although prescribing medicine is still left under a doctor’s discretion, commercial advertisements can openly seek to direct a potential patient’s interest toward certain pharmaceuticals. The proposition is that this possible, future patient may not know what to tell his doctor so as to initiate this line of necessary, successful and profitable treatment. The infomercials solve that.

Also added are certain psychological presumptions. Departing briefly from the death fear, the capitalists have managed to successfully suggest to doctors (and insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies) that any diversion from the current system would inevitably curtail what are presently claimed as reasonable, capitalistic profits. The countering view is that these reasonable, capitalistic profits are actually another one of our famous capitalistic “bubbles,” that is, reasonable, capitalistic profits probably not that reasonable after all. This addition survives on innuendo, but it survives.

Another almost subconscious addition has found its way into the mix. It seems that these highly ethical doctors have a habit of “milking” treatment costs in certain situations. In many cases, this has successfully been blamed on the patients. It turns out that extremely low income and minority patients simply don’t know how to consume health care as cost effectively as more well-to-do sick folks. The concept is not too hard to swallow. If these ne’er do wells were smarter, they would find themselves in the more prosperous category.

The obvious conclusion is that health care for these “lower class” patients is far more likely to be unreasonably expensive. The unreasonably expensive idea arises from several origins. The first is, simply, that the more prosperous are paying for it. From that point of view, any treatment at all may as well be unreasonably expensive. We see that brutally manifested in modern political dogma. It has never been easier to “jerk the knee” of an illiterate neocon with even the most innocent mention of an alternate medical economy.

Another important side effect which must be avoided in that argument is the possibility that less than ethical doctors are encouraged to haul their medical franchises to these, well, less desirable neighborhoods where special opportunities for excessively profitable treatment seem to abound. The down side possibility of this neo-conservative, self-fulfilling prophecy is lubricated by maximum resource extraction until the happy day when that dire prediction becomes fact. Poor people love to consume unnecessary medical care when rich people are forced to pay for it. Unethical, lower class doctors love to bill this into existence so long as they are held harmless from criticism, prosecution or Medicare review. This concept has definitely been added to the mix.

Finally, we arrive at the elephant in the living room. Again. Except in this case, the elephant is better cast as a six hundred pound hog. A hungry one. Not directly attaching Sara Palin to the argument, the lipstick issue rises up front and center. This, of course, is the matter of medical outcomes. The question of medical outcomes, inevitably joined at the hip to the question of medical costs, immediately casts its shadow on the question of medical profits and the comparative value of alternative medical economies, not neglecting the strange taint of medical economic ideology. All the feathers swirling around this headless chicken fly right in the face of the “best in the world” axiom describing our health care.

U.S. health care outcomes suck compared to those of comparably prosperous other countries. U.S. health care costs also suck when compared to the same alternative programs. Pay more. Get less.

It isn’t glorious, expensive new inventions that justify our health care costs. Nor waste. Nor welfare fraud. Nor chiropractors. Nor herbalists, accupuncturists or midwives.

It’s profit. You know, profit like the profit buried in the pharmaceutical bill that was authored by the pharmaceutical lobbyists and passed by the, well, pharmaceutical congress at 3 o’clock in the morning.

"Lawzee! Peddlin' these pills turns a better profit than sellin' whores in a lumbercamp!"

At this juncture, our cultural rip current of Marxist paranoia instantly enters the fray at full power. Who, exactly, is getting all this money? Who, exactly, is convincing us that our meager medical outcomes are actually the “best in the world?” What voice keeps telling us that, if we think a social medicine system is so great, to simply visit Canada? Canada, where everyone hates the national health care? Canada, where hordes of sick people flood into the U.S. every day, trying desperately to save their lives? Canada, where pharmaceuticals exploit the huge, honest investments we make here making their socialized price there attractive enough for elderly Americans to ride buses across the United States for a chance to buy them? With uninsured cash? Please.

If not Canada, then Europe. England. South Korea. Japan.

If the elephant in the living room is hard to ignore, discover the pig. Aside from being huge, it also stinks. Hogs also have a famous insistence on eating everything that isn’t bolted down, and this one is no exception.

Quick! Apply the lipstick! The good old “best in the world” lipstick.

Had enough? Remember this medical-pharmaceutical-insurance monopoly franchise on November 4th. Vote.