A Look Back/ A Step Forward
September 2, 2010
If you are really serious about universal health care, then go after it one step at a time. If you are serious about equal rights for gay citizens, go after them one step at a time. If you want to feel good about those goals-to feel an emotional high- then go after those goals the way the ultra-progressives have done. Rant, rave, and ask for everything at once, like a child. In the end, prolong the agony of those people that really need to progress. You and I can afford to confuse our ideals with our personal emotions. You and I can afford to delay the very progress which we seek.
Bernie Sanders and Anthony Weiner, for instance, are two men whom I truly admire, but they, like so many others, are victims of their own idealism. I agree with virtually all of their goals for health care, but not the ineffectual way in which they went after them. Health care in this country is still a dream for so many people who cannot afford it, yet deserve it and a free gift to many of those welfare patients who abuse it. It is a huge burden on U.S. citizens and taxpayers. Their taxes and blood money line the pockets of politicians, lobbies and insurance companies, even as our government borrows even more money to fill the unfillable pockets of the same whores.
President Obama, a gentle and caring man, much like Jimmy Carter, not ready for the rigors of those hard decisions of the presidential office, has sought to be a mediator. He has vowed to “not look back,” to not investigate the abject corruption of the previous administration. He has chosen an all too “bipartisan” Attorney General with ties to an opposition party law firm. He has chosen to neuter his own Justice Department and to mute John Conyers and various important Congressional investigative committees. Our president is a miserable student of history. His naive trust in cooperation between our two major parties is clearly not warranted. As soon as Republicans like Barbara Bachmann and Darrel Issa take over the House, they will do what the more depraved members of their party have always done: project their own malicious qualities onto their victims. Just as bigoted marchers portrayed President Obama as a white faced Nazi, just as chicken hawks Junior Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton portrayed anti war candidates as cowards, the unprincipled Bachmann and Issa will try to resurrect the witch hunts that have defined their legacy. The result will be gridlock and further deterioration of our infrastructure and the economy.
Mr. Obama needs to wake up to the reality of our situation. The BP disaster would not have happened if the Justice Department were permitted to do its job. The unfinished Abramoff investigation had led from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the Department of the Interior and to the Mineral Management Agency where members received bribes, not only from Abramoff, on behalf of certain Native American gambling interests, but from oil and coal interests to relax and ignore safety regulations. Offenders were permitted to resign and take high paying jobs with the very industries for whom they had betrayed their country. Unfortunately, dozens of coal miners and oil rig workers died as a result of their actions. Two things are undeniable. If the neutered Justice Department had (as it still can) discussed even the possibility of charges of negligent homicide against both the government officials who were compromised and the industries involved, there would be no further problem in enforcement of safety regulations. Second, Mr. Obama, now your back will be against the wall. Deprived of a majority in the House and the subpoena power which you have frittered away, you are left with only one remedy for both cleaning up the corruption of the Junior Bush administration and protection of your own administration from gridlock and unwarranted investigations. You can no longer afford to keep Eric Holder as Attorney General. Brilliant as he is, whether due to conflicts of interest or lack of integrity, he is more useless than Alberto Gonzalez. Worse yet, through Holder and legal concubines like Elena Kagan and their constant obstruction of justice, they will lead to your own impeachment proceedings.
Personally, I have no doubt that legitimate investigation of the Departments discussed above may lead to embarrassing moments for people like Ken Salazar and members of his office. However, I assume that it will lead to very embarrassing and probably incriminating moments for individuals such as Dick Cheney and Tom Delay. Like you, Mr. President, I share the fear of permanent damage to our government institutions that wholesale prosecutions of the offending parties might produce. As I have said many times, the Constitution demands investigation of wrongdoing, but not punishment, and transactional immunity is a wonderful remedy for procuring truth without malice.
Allen Finkelstein, D.O.