Pork Links

It’s becoming more difficult for me to get riled up over the ineffectiveness of our US Congress any more. It’s business as usual in the health care debate, which means we will get little or nothing in the way of true reform. It will be interesting to see how this brand of sausage is ground into our body of laws. No bi-partisanship from our lawmakers, just protection for “their constituents”…Big Pharma and Health Insurance companies. Legislators have had their hands in the pockets of big business for over 200 years forming a symbiotic relationship that has been impossible to shame, legislate, or criminalize out of our legislative system. So what to do? No state in the union wants to lose its conduit to millions of dollars in pork, so each Senator or Representative who brings home the bacon at the end of the year is likely to be re-elected. Sometimes these men and women will stumble and reveal some personal flaw, (being unfaithful, untruthful, untrustworthy, unethical, etc.) but we are unwilling to vote them out of office for what we internalize as a lapse in moral judgment because we don’t want to lose the prestigious seat they occupy on the Finance Committee or the National Security Committee, or dilute the influence they have in getting prime projects for local businesses. The “system” works for those lucky enough to be able to manipulate it. It works when our legislator secures for our home state some large grant from the federal government that brings jobs to our unemployed. It works when we are given large amounts of federal money to mitigate a disaster. We thank our legislators for carving out that large slice for us from the federal budget where 49 other states feed at the federal trough. But what do we really get for all the money we pay in taxes to the government? We probably won’t get true healthcare reform. We find out who benefits depending on whether it is an election year or not. When our legislators have to worry about our votes, they are more likely to pass laws that benefit the voters. When they don’t have to worry about winning an election, they pass legislation geared toward business. We are not happy with “the system” but we are so used to the way it works and comfortable with the predictability of its corruption that we have become resigned to enduring its perversity. But “we the people” ARE the government. We have become complicit in “the system”. We are its enablers. We provide the means by which we can screw ourselves. We are the butt of our own joke. We have no reason to complain unless we are willing to change the status quo. Those of us who voted for a Democratic majority in both houses of congress voted for change. I am ready to clean out the pig sty and not just apply another coat of lipstick on this pig.