This day brings reflection on what hasn't been done, brought about in part by an article reporting the Republican mission to delay Cap and Trade, as they attempt to subvert any noble intention. I myself have tired of such obfuscation by the body politic, especially in the Senate.
How does all this affect those of us waiting as we are for meaningful reform and how do we feel about it? Some old guy alive in the last days of steam locomotives writes in the next box with the hope that it might ring true with you.
And always, thank you for this wonderful forum.
I revel in these crisp autumn days. A bright rising sun glints off my handlebars as we chug down narrow lanes with trees in full blaze. Regardless of man’s worse intentions, this morning speaks to what hath God wrought, if you’re a believing person. Nature always offers her check of a better tomorrow, fully redeemable in the coinage of faith. Thinking like that caused my visor to fog up. Raising it, the wind whips in shivering my sunglasses and making me grin.
At the diner, the train crew is in with their switch engine idling out back. I smell streak-o-lean as I’m pulling off my gloves and helmet. This old place used to feed all the hands in the industrial area with its factories and warehouses. Everything is mostly shut down now, but the diner endures. Guys that used to work still come by and hunch over strong black coffee and grits with a pair scrambled with cheese. It’s the high point of the day for most of them and it pushes on nearly until the lunch setup. I sit along the back wall, feeling it vibrate in tandem with the locomotive outside.
I gaze out the window as a poplar sheds it’s summer cloak onto the cracked pavement and think about the simplicity that seems so abundant in nature and conspicuously absent in man. I’m constantly surprised at what seems self evident to anyone capable of chasing a thought to ground seems unattainable to so many others. What was that you say?
Being only educated enough to fog a mirror and then only after effort, it seems to me the current healthcare bill has been allowed to become a bait and switch boondoggle of epic proportions. Some of you have read the bill, those 1900 single spaced pages of legal prose and vague interpretations. We know the corporate Republicans and blue dogs will oppose it regardless. I’d like to ask Jonathan Turley if Obama can sign an Executive Order extending Medicare to all Americans and be done with it. I’d like to know if there is currently a cap on Medicare contributions like there is on Social Security and if so, can they be eliminated, thus funding the programs in full. It’s simple and it bypasses an awful lot of needless hysteria. It’s what Roosevelt would have done in a heartbeat. Can we eliminate the private supplementary provisions currently in Medicare to bring it back up to what it used to be, no donut holes and corporate chicanery?
I’m just trying to think of ways to drive the bus around that pothole, that massive water main break called the US Senate. I ask each of you what that august body has done to benefit the people in X amount of years. I ask what relevant bill has emerged unscathed that hasn’t been liberally watered in corporate sewerage as it flows from the Senate floor. It seems unlikely the process will ever improve. Even John Adams chronicled his impatience with the Senate upon its creation and its primary predisposition to serve the moneyed. We ARE allowed to change by peaceful means via referenda what is found to be dysfunctional or serves not the citizenry. The simple guy in the diner concludes that via amendment the Legislative Branch needs to become unicameral, a much more representative form of governance.
Where are the WPA and the CCC? They left an enduring legacy of waterworks, beautiful stone bridges, hiking trails and parks here in my state. What’s to prevent us from reopening these programs? It’s true the Business Roundtable, NAM and the Chambers of Commerce would be opposed, but they had their chance and that day has long passed like a single blade plow. Is it populism to expect work, meaningful work? Is it fair for men to be idled because of rampant greed in far off cities? By what authority are billions of dollars instantly sent to shore up failing institutions, (and like CIT, fail anyway) while unemployment bills costing comparative pennies languish in Republican dungeons in the bowels of the Senate. There’s my Senatorial examples of uselessness for the week.
Back outside, the switch crew is eyeballing my ancient steed. We compare horsepower, my 70 or so, the engineer has about 1700 at his disposal. I get better roads, he doesn’t have as many stop signs. I think I’d like to climb up and sit at the pedestal and pull that string of empties to somewhere I haven’t been in a long time, like say, a thriving town, full of industry and workmen laboring at union scale producing for a ready world.
We have to get that world back. We just can’t have such disproportionate wealth. We must solve our problems with urgency and inveigle the reluctant in our midst to stand aside while the Herculean task of national repair is embraced anew. There is no time left for review or reluctance. As FDR noted, if one thing doesn’t work try something else, but do something!
Our Exec seems saddled with timidity, so they say. He’s surrounded by agenda driven people, each pushing and pulling an erstwhile young man to do their private bidding. I couldn’t begin to envision his daily trials nor do I envy him his tasks. He has to undo over 30 years of malice and ruination and we want those tasks completed yesterday by noon. Only by doing something unexpected, something earth shaking will our Mr. Obama grow distance from the toadies, the shills and the warriors that seek influence in the Oval.
Close down the wars Mr. President. Shutter them as surely as they were initially prompted, and as quickly. Ram through emergency public works that are truly public without meddling private influence. Deal harshly with those that brought us to financial ruin and do it with the full might of our institutions. Empower from the bottom up, reinforcing the idea of state chartered banks, passage of the complete EFCA bill and full enforcement of our trade bills, the WTO notwithstanding. We have to have parity of trade whether multinationals embrace it or not.
Capitalism has proved itself antithetical to those who work, alternating between punishing and rewarding, but always on its terms not he who does the actual labor. This carryover from the Industrial age must be dispensed with if ever we are to reduce the number of disconsolate in our prisons, the uneducated in our schools and the teeming unemployed in our streets. As Wall Street waxes, the commoners wane, as row upon row of vacant houses reflect broken American dreams unassailable in the logic that an epoch has passed, the last bus disappearing down a distant road. There are those that believe in a new Federalism, count me amongst them.
It’s becoming rubble out here, Mr. President. The ominous scraps of yesterday’s newspapers blow by in the ill whirlwinds not of our making but ours for the taking if only a champion would finally draw the line. It’s time, you see. Not for the missteps of your predecessors, not for Rasmussen to proclaim the agreed upon, but to act ere more die of medical neglect, of malnutrition, of the cold and mainly governmental indifference.
You have big shoes Mr. Obama. Take big steps. Do it for your lovely children, do it for ours. This needn’t end badly, for want of a horse. But do it now.
The sun now rides higher in the sky. People in the public housing are hanging out wash and old men file into the barbershop at the corner. I thunder by, hoping I get home in time to transpose my emotions into words in one take. There are chores to do, whether you work or not. There are things to help the neighbors with. Winter’s on it’s way, but today there’s that check that Nature’s offered, a contract of loving embrace, in disregard of man’s worse intentions, offering sunlight, simplicity and another tomorrow.