...I wrote the other night about that Blue Dog ass Jim Cooper and how he stuck the shiv into Obama and the stimulus. And I noted this important piece by Mike Lux about Cooper's important role in the tanking of the Clinton health care plan in 1994.
Well, guess what? He's being discussed as the replacement for Daschle at HHS, which is only slightly less ludicrous than the silly idea of Newt Gingrich in the job.
Jim Cooper is an enemy of universal health care. He will, howver, work to ensure that the insurance industry and the Big Pharma gets more of your tax dollars...
There are dozens if not hundreds of smart, sincere, dedicated and experienced MD/ PhD/ MPH types around the country qualified to run Health and Human Services. Why exactly does it require a politician? I mean, if you actually want an administrator to do something instead of figurehead it.
The answer, of course, is that our government is owned by people who want figureheads, not real heads, in titular charge.
It's like Chris Hedges says. If this keeps up, it's not going to be okay (thanks, Avedon):
...Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism and the Constitution while cynically manipulating internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens, but they must raise staggering amounts of corporate funds to compete. They are beholden to armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington or state capitals who write the legislation. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion or diverts us with trivia and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes. “Economics dominates politics—and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.”
...The basic systems are going to stay in place; they are too powerful to be challenged.. This is shown by the financial bailout. It does not bother with the structure at all. I don’t think Obama can take on the kind of military establishment we have developed. This is not to say that I do not admire him. He is probably the most intelligent president we have had in decades. I think he is well meaning, but he inherits a system of constraints that make it very difficult to take on these major power configurations. I do not think he has the appetite for it in any ideological sense. The corporate structure is not going to be challenged. There has not been a word from him that would suggest an attempt to rethink the American imperium...
Not if he doesn't want his bodyguards to walk away from the car the way they did on that day in Dallas in 1963.
...in inverted totalitarianism consumer goods and a comfortable standard of living, along with a vast entertainment industry that provides spectacles and diversions, keep the citizenry politically passive...
There has not been an effort to rethink anything by anyone except the people outside of the Village, and of the things Obama promised to rethink- like the war, like accountability- most are becoming subverted to the Clintonista/ Poppy Bu$h visions of Centrism Obama encountered as he became embedded in the Village culture.
Change? The Cheney-Bu$h NeoCon has been replaced by the Obama-Clinton-Bu$h NeoLiberal, and honest conservatives and honest liberals are equally dismissed as the radical fringe.
Centrism, a mask for Corporatism, is the real enemy.
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