My rant to Senator Baucus

[Cleita]

I started to mail him this letter but thought that it would only end up in the shredder at best, so I thought I would publish it on DU instead for more eyes to look at it.

Dear Senator Baucus:

There is no doubt now after the health reform hearings that you are a for profit health care industry whore. We were suspicious when we saw what you received in campaign contributions but we thought you would have the decency to let representatives of the American people attend the Finance Committee meetings on health care.

Instead the insurance companies, HMOs and Big PhRMA are deciding how to further raid our Treasury. The representatives of the American people, who are advocates for extending a government program for everyone that is already in existence, Medicare, have been shut out. How dare you claim that single payer is off the table? How dare you, a Senator from a state that has more bears, horses and cattle than people, declare that this is what the country wants? You in your rural state do not speak for the country especially the heavily populated states that really need this legislation for their economies to thrive.

You will regret this when election time comes because even the people of your own state of Montana are up in arms about it and all the money the Washington health care lobbyists can throw your way in the next election, probably isn’t going to make a difference in your defeat.

So feel a little better putting my disgust and despair in words. But I really am feeling hopeless about this issue right now.

[Vinca]

1. Read some of the responses to Jack Cafferty's first question of the day.

We are not alone.http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2009/05/12/do-you-trust-health-care-groups-to-voluntarily-save-2-trillion-over-the-next-decade/#more-5853

[Cleita]

2. Everybody is disgusted and they aren't falling for the savings ploy. n/t

[DCKit]

3. Send it anyway. At least it'll waste some of their time. n/t

[MisterP]

4. instead of "whore," write "courtesan": it's classier ;)

80% of Congress is less responsive than even Brezhnev's Soviet Union or post-Bierut Poland: our 60s and 70s protests evaporated into the seeking of the post-OPEC Me Generation and then the triumphalist lunacy of Reagan, while the Poles got Gomułka booted.
I think the 2010s and 20s are going to be sort of reruns of the 1920s and 30s: instead of democracies and Commies vs. fascism, it'll be antidemocratic, spy-happy neoliberals vs. out-and-loud democratic Marxists. Even if the fascists get ascendant and install a New Order, we still might get Dalí, Gramsci, György Lukács, and the Frankfurt School.

[Cleita]

7. Yep, what are we going to do with the neo-liberals to get them to see how

stupid they are. When we were in the cold war with the Soviet Union, the type of thinking that was rampant during the last eight years of the Bush administration was laughed at as stupid propaganda like the Soviet Union fed it's citizens. When did we become the Soviet Union?

[MisterP]

9. technically, Bush-thought is an extension of Reagan-thought (which was mostly comprised of

shameless projection): there's a continuity between Chimpy and the Cold Warriors, only with Islamofascists (and, briefly, pirates) in place of the Commies (who replaced the Nazis as the Great Foe for the "idealistic" war pigs, who spread democracy first and grab oil second, but leave the same amount of dead)
the Brezhnev era saw oodles of propaganda from Kaliningrad to Sakhalin, but US propaganda was even more relentless--and believed by far more recipients than Brezhnev's
so, really, we've become Huxley's world state, or capitalist-roader China (dangerously poisonous rivers and melamine, yum!), promising prosperity while losing its soul (we can also be Nicholas II's Russia, if we try really hard! ;))

[lunatica]

5. You should send it because everyone should send one

Only clean it up. Just ask yourself, "How would President Obama and Michelle say it?"

It's actually more effective if you state the truth without resorting to telling them how you really feel about them as whores, etc.

Even Michael Moore would tell you to be polite.

But in private I agree he's a whore.

[Cleita]

6. Er, using the word whore was cleaning up what I really was thinking, but you

are right. I should use the word courtesan instead as another DUer mentioned.

[lunatica]

8. How about saying "high priced courtesan" ?

Making it very clear that he's taken lots and lots of money from them and is now bending over for them.