Quid Pro Quo
January 21, 2010
Now that the Supreme Soviet Court has disposed of the Constitution, before we ask why five judges ruled to turn a democratic republic into a Corporate empire, we need to ask why five citizens of this most wonderful country would wish to destroy it. In the past ten years, hugely wealthy lobbies have been able to buy congressmen, senators, and presidents. In doing so, they have actually nullified some of the most important cornerstones of the Constitution.
In the most obvious and brazen of these acts, the pharmaceutical lobby was asked by Billy Tauzin and Tom Delay to write Part D of Medicare. In exchange, both would be given huge contributions to their campaigns and Billy Tauzin would be given two million dollars per year as the president of the lobby. In the bill, the lobby included a clause prohibiting the use of the forty three million Medicare members as leverage to negotiate better prices. The action would more than double the price of drugs for these patients. The two congressmen were paid millions of dollars to purposely deprive Medicare patients of the right to competitive bidding. They were brazen enough to actually put in writing their willfull violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Enforcement of the the Amendment, promising equal protection of the law, would save the medicare seniors at least fifty billion dollars per year! Amazingly this does not even count the tens of biliions of out-of-pocket costs after they have reached the dreaded "doughnut hole."
Equally amazing, and even more disappointing, is the apparent irony, that after all their study and discussion, five inept members of the Supreme Court have not read past the First Amendment. In fact, they have not even finished reading the entire First Amendment. In a cruel twist of fate, unbridled contributuions to public officials completely drown out the, supposedly, protected right of citizens "to petition the government for a redress of grievences." Thus, "Free Speech," purchased with millions and billions of dollars is still considered "free," while the average citizen has almost no "free" access to his government.
What then, is the answer? Short of government financed major campaigns and flat out limits on all contributions, the Department of Justice must seek out cases of "Quid Pro Quo," clear cases of bribery, intended to influence public officials to violate laws and to purposely deprive citizens of their rights. It means reopening the Abramoff case. It means exposing scores of politicians in Alabama, including Governor Riley, Senator Sessions, and scores of both Republican and Democratic public officials who have clearly accepted illegal contributions. It means exposing the participants and perpetrators of the politilcal persecutions and abuses of the Junior Bush Inquisition, including the dismissal of prosecutors and judges who have either suborned perjury or allowed blatant perjury. It means that the FBI must reopen investigations that they were forced, by a rogue Justice Department, to drop. It is time for the Bureau to reassert itself as an impartial investigative agency, not the political pawn of an unethical administration.
To do these things, The entire Justice Department must be analyzed and the most brazen and obvious violaters purged. This is not a job for Eric Holder, inept appointee to the position of Attorney General. It is time for Mr. Obama to admit his mistake, cut his losses, and arrange for the appointment of a viable candidate to this post, one properly vetted. Objections by the likes of Senators Shelby and Sessions and other hypocrites can be nullified in short order by reopening the Abramoff investigaion by the FBI. After eight years of illiteracy in the Oval Office, not by someone who could not read, but by someone who preferred to be briefed by illiterate and sometimes "neopsychotic" advisors, nothing seems to have changed. Nothing, that is, except the advisors. Do I need to call my sister-in-law, the reading specialist, to tutor our new president as well as more than half of the Supreme Court?
Mr. Obama has already shown that he is a poor student of history, escalating a useless war in Afghanistan, at a cost of one million dollars per soldier. The money, will not go to brave, poorly paid soldiers, but to very well paid defense contractors and carpetbaggers. General McChrystal, interpreter of the "New History of Afghanistan," the one that says we will be the first invader to ever win a war there, the first not to lose huge amounts of money or go bankrupt, the first not to lose thousands of soldiers has advised the president. He is the same McChrystal who covered up the Pat Tillman fragging, who supervised the torture of prisoners in Iraq, who blamed the torture on General Karpinski and scores of underlings. He skated. My question: how much will the good general be paid, upon retirement, by his "friends" in the defense industry?
Quid-Pro-Quo[1]
Allen Finkelstein, D.O.
[1] Quid-Pro_Quo: in legal usage, an item or service traded in return for something of value.