My own view is that the "health care reform" battle is toast, put a fork in it. "Reform" here is an even better government organized and subsidized "health" industry cartel with a lot of prime low risk customers "mandated" to buy their product., in exchange for some obvious regulatory reforms concerning well-known insurance loopholes. Nothing structurally different here, just a tighter, richer boondoggle.
Time to start looking down the road to the next battle, as "immigration reform" is rumored to be next on the Democrats agenda. Here left liberal pwogs appear to have already surrendered the high ground, pre-capitulating on "illegal aliens" during the health care thing. But the hydra-headed far right wackos might just be playing with fire here, since the immigrant rights movement proved itself the only mass movement alive in the U.S.A in our time a few years back, in reaction to a few hysterical overweight, middle-aged American white guys from Pennsylvania calling themselves "Minutemen" - they probably aren't even up for that minuscule timespan without a dose of Viagra - coming down to the Arizona border to "protect" it. This was about the time the Iraq War started to go sour, and the the far right hydrahead bleaters were anxious to change the subject and went gunning for a new target. After hundreds of thousands mobilized for immigrant rights in cities such as Dallas, which probably hasn't seen a mass demonstration on its streets since the Civil War, you'll notice that those big, brave "Minutemen" kinda shriveled up and went 'poof'. Don't want to mobilize the 'wrong' people, for crying out loud! For this reason I look forward to this next battle, besides which we can really smack the liberals around on this without even the pretense of agreement on 'reform'. The key will be that the far right continue the idiocy of depicting whatever Obama does as "communist", including on this issue. Otherwise, sad to say, but given the actual course of "Reagan's 6th term", one of the best things that could come out of the Obama experience would be if one of the right wing's wacko minions were to (heaven forbid, of course) actually assassinate Obama. The righteous anger they would have unleashed upon themselves would be richly deserved. -Matt ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No doubt. Worst mistake ever made after the Civil War was allowing South Carolina back into the union as a state, rather than maintaining the military occupation. The frenzy whipped up by the money- backed white religious right is truly remarkable in its racism, including threats to "hunt Obama" made as jokes by candidates running for office. Hey, I thought threats against the president, even as jokes, were a federal offense. Somebody needs to tell the FBI that Obama is president, no matter what the cross-dressing ghost of J. Edgar Hoover thinks. Three things enable this-- the fear and panic of the white property-holders bailing furiously to stay afloat in their little dinghys, the passivity of the working class, AND the Obama administrations's determination to follow through on Bush's policies to maintain that passivity. Most recently, the Obama administration will institute the "E-verify" program that requires companies and contactors doing work for the Feds to submit names and IDs of employees for verification of legal residency status. ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
