I’m having a Lewis Black moment. Those of you who have seen Lewis Black on The Daily Show or elsewhere know exactly what I mean – I’m so upset I’m about to burst a blood vessel. You see, while everyone has spent the past week talking incessantly about the Swift Boat Veterans for Untruth and John Kerry’s Vietnam service, we happened to miss an important story (in the New York Times) about the connection between slow job growth and the cost of health insurance. Speaking as someone who has been out of work for 10 months and has no health insurance, this story matters a lot more to me than what John Kerry did 30 YEARS AGO!!!!
Kerry brought this nonsense on himself, by choosing to focus exclusively on his Vietnam service while glossing over his 30 years of public service since then. How many of you knew that Kerry was a US Attorney? Did anyone out there know that Kerry has been a US Senator for 20 years? (Not to be confused with former Senator Bob Kerrey, also a Vietnam vet, and the former paramour of Debra Winger.) Someone high up in John Kerry’s campaign came up with the bright idea that all we should talk about is the fact that he served in ‘Nam as a young man, because then people will take him seriously on defense issues. Not a bad idea, but if anyone thought that Kerry’s military service would protect him from Republican attacks, you haven’t been paying attention for the past 25 years. The GOP has never let truth be an impediment to a tough campaign.
So it’s our duty to get the campaigns focused on something that really matters, like jobs and health care. During the past four years, we’ve lost approximately 1 million jobs. This job loss comes despite three massive tax cuts designed to stimulate job creation. I’d like to have the phone numbers of any fat cats out there that got their big tax cuts, so I can call them up to collect my job! And according to the Times’ story, many business owners and managers are reluctant to create new jobs, because each job costs them thousands of dollars in associated health insurance premiums. For decades, we’ve put the burden of paying for health insurance on employers – they provide it as a benefit to attract workers (or in the case of Wal-Mart and the restaurant industry, they don’t). There’s no reason at all why this should be the case. Perhaps if we joined Costa Rica and other nations that provide universal health insurance, we could also provide a huge stimulus to our economy (and create millions of jobs in the process) by lifting the burden from employers’ shoulders?
It’s a bold idea, but we can’t waste any valuable time talking about jobs or health care. It’s far more important that we discuss how 30 years ago John Kerry took a piece of jagged shrapnel in his hand and SHOVED IT INTO HIS OWN ARM just so he could get a Purple Heart!!