Open letter to Congress

Saturday morning of Labor Day weekend and Robert Reich, economist and former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is writing about the worst employment and wage numbers since the Great Depression. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-real-news-about-jobs_b_278098.html


Which is why I question opposition to a public option for health care.

I understand the fear of average citizens and their reactionary response. When media sources conflate fear and feed the public lies, they’re going to strike out at the biggest bogeyman they can find – government.

But your cowardice astounds and frustrates me. Where is your leadership? America is about to careen off a cliff, and you’re still playing politics!

The true measure of Washington cravenness is your inability to read the signs our entire economy is about to collapse. Instead, you let corporate executives push to keep their overblown salaries and fight regulation, actions doomed to send them crashing into the abyss, too. Their consumer market is shrinking. Who will buy their crap now? (And the last year has proven it’s crap!)

Members of Congress, particularly Republicans and conservative Blue Dog Dems, saw on the same old ideological platitudes while Rome burns. Meanwhile, corporate media looks the other way because they live in gated communities where everyone is still “doing OK.” Or they’re too dumb to understand the subjects they report on. (Witness Maria Bartiromo interviewing Rep. Ron Weiner about Medicare.)

Congress needs to study American history. When our economy has been at its worst, more government intervention (not less) has been required to stimulate growth and turn things around. This means deficit spending. And it has been government programs like Social Security, the Works Progress Administration, the GI Bill and Medicare that have stabilized the economy and allowed citizens to pursue new business ventures.

Right now, the American business sector is shrinking. This is largely due to rising health care costs. And only a government or public option will be large enough to ensure the competition to drive costs down.

But most disturbing to me is the loyalty of duly elected Congress men and women to the insurance and health care sectors instead of to the American people. Voters on all sides ought to be angry, and instead of shouting at each other, we ought to be taking names. Instead of letting Congress people like Charles Grassley scare the pants off us with comments about “pulling the plug on Grandma,” we should be asking him why he took more than $2 million from health insurers and providers.

You’re supposed to be working for us, and we need help – desperately.

Reagan was wrong

Probably the most damaging legacy Ronald Reagan left America is his oft-quoted statement: “Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem.” That one sweeping statement rendered our democracy helpless and allowed government leaders to abandon leadership for profit and power.

And we the people fell for it.

Democracy, particularly American democracy, has always been about shared responsibility. In democracies, citizens are responsible for determining who represents them in government as well as for actively monitoring representatives’ work. Yet over the last 30 years, we’ve given up these responsibilities.

“If government is the problem, why vote? Why follow legislation and contact our senators and representatives with our opinions? It doesn’t make a difference.” This is the prevailing attitude.

And so more and more over the last 30 years, U.S. government has been influenced not by the people it was created to serve, but by corporations and wealthy Americans whose agenda is to further enrich and empower themselves. And not coincidentally, our media outlets, responsible for bringing us information about government, have covered less and less policy. Instead, their corporate ownership directs the focus to personalities, social issues like abortion, and deceptively titled legislation like No Child Left Behind or the Clean Air Act.

Make no mistake. This is propaganda, more commonly referred to as public relations in politically correct terms. And we’ve swallowed it hook, line and sinker.

But now that we’re in a real crisis, citizens are beginning to question things. I’ve waited a long time for this, because I believe government, and more specifically democracy, is the solution to our problems – when we all participate.

And that means more than flying your flag and putting red-white-and-blue magnets on your car. It even goes beyond voting. It means reading about local, state and federal legislation, and registering your opinion via phone calls, letters and e-mails. It means stepping up to serve in government if you feel capable. It means advocating for the causes important to you. And most of all it means questioning everything in search of the public good.

Reagan was wrong. Government isn’t the problem, but many of the people we’ve elected are. And with his attitude, he was one of them.