Blue doggin’
In case you don’t watch Keith Olbermann (for which I can’t really blame you, he’s a blowhard, although that doesn’t mean he’s wrong), you may have missed his show the other night, in which he tore into elected officials on both sides of the aisle for opposing healthcare and receiving massive political contributions from insurance companies. It’s pretty brutal; read the whole thing here. A few excerpts:
In March of 1911, after a wave of minor factory fires in New York City, the City’s Fire Commissioner issued emergency rules about fire prevention, protection, escape, sprinklers. The City’s Manufacturers Association, in turn, called an emergency meeting to attack the Fire Commissioner and his ‘interference with commerce.’
The new rules were delayed. Just days later, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The door to the fire escape had been bolted shut to keep the employees from leaving prematurely. One hundred and fifty of those employees died, many by jumping from the seventh floor windows to avoid the flames.
Fire fighters setting up their ladders literally had to dodge the falling, often burning, bodies of women.
This was the spirit of the American corporation then. It is the spirit of the American corporation now. It is what the corporation will do, when it is left alone, for a week.
Jeepers. Don’t hold back, Keith.
Because the insurance industry owns the Republican Party. Not exclusively. Pharma owns part of it, too. Hospitals and HMO’s, another part. Nursing homes, they have a share. You name a Republican, any Republican, and he is literally brought to you by campaign donations from the health sector.
Senator John Thune of South Dakota? You gave the Republican rebuttal to the President’s weekly address day before yesterday. You said the Democrats’ plan was for “government run health care that would disrupt our current system, and force millions of Americans who currently enjoy their employer-based coverage into a new health care plan run by government bureaucrats.”
That’s a bald-faced lie, Senator. And you’re a bald-faced liar, whose bald face happens to be covered by your own health care plan run by government bureaucrats…
Senator Thune has thus far received from the Health Sector, campaign contributions – and all these numbers tonight are from “The Center For Responsive Politics” — campaign contributions amounting to one 1,206,176 dollars. So much for Senator Thune.
So much indeed.
…[T]he evil truth is, the Insurance industry, along with Hospitals, HMO’s, Pharma, nursing homes — it owns Democrats, too… Hundreds of Democrats have taken campaign money from the Health Sector without handing over their souls as receipts. But conveniently, the ones who are owned have made themselves easy to spot in a crowd.
They’ve called themselves “Blue Dogs,” and they are out there, hand- in-hand with the Republicans, who they are happy to condemn day and night on everything else, throatily singing “Kumbaya” with the men and women who were bought and sold to defend this con game of an American health care system against the slightest encroachment.
