Special Interests In Charge

Who is pulling the strings of those in Congress? If your hunch is the health insurance companies, the evidence would back you up. The health insurance companies have targeted their lobbying and blackmail efforts on key Democrats in districts where reelection is anything but assured due to large conservative constituencies. They threaten to launch campaigns during the election season targeting these incumbent Democrats with ads depicting them as government take over artists of America's health care system and socialists destroying capitalism in America. And these Democrats are yielding to these special interests who are fighting to preserve their 400% increase in profits as your and my health insurance premiums doubled in the same period.

The VA and Medicare and Medicaid didn't put private health insurers out of business and they are government run health insurance organizations. In fact, quite the opposite happened, private health insurers have produced all time high records for profits and and executive compensation along side these government run health insurance programs. That's the history and those are the facts. So, why do we, as voters and a majority in this country, tolerate these incumbents who submit to being lackey's for the wealthy special interests? The answer would fill volumes of books, but, suffice to say, we voters should not be tolerating this kind of abandonment of the majority in America by their representatives in Congress.

Same deal with the financial and banking sectors, rapaciously raising fees, interest rates, and monthly payments on customers while the getting is good. For all the arguments to the contrary, there simply is no rational excuse for Congress allocating bailouts of the banks and financial sector which were not tied to serious penalties and stringent oversight and regulation immediately following. But, the wealthy special interests again, had their way under the Bush administration with last year's Congress, and so far, they have had their way as well under the Obama administration and this year's Congress, which hasn't passed one single piece of legislation to revamp oversight and regulation of this industry.

Needless to say, the result is 140 billion dollars to be passed out by the banks and financial corporations in executive compensation this year alone. This should cause voters to rail at both the industry and their Congressional representatives. But, moreover, shareholders should be in an uproar, as these executives cost shareholders enormously from Sept. 2008 through March of 2009, and the lion's share of this 140 billion dollars windfall profits on the back of tax payer deficits, should be directed as compensation to shareholders for their losses over the last year. Instead, this money is directed to reward those who nearly brought the global economy and our own to a grinding halt.

So, I ask you? What higher reason would a voter have to reelect their representative in light of these historical events of incompetence, greed, bribery, and blackmail which ran unbridled through our midst, destroying 401K balances, stock portfolios, and pension retirement funds, not to mention more than half of all State economies in which we live?

At some point, voters must reject these kinds of results from their Congress, or else, Americans will experience the diminished future and increased hardships which our representative's loyalties to the wealthy special interests are fashioning for us all.

Don't vote for them again, in 2010. If you are a Democrat, vote for a Democratic challenger in the Primary. Likewise, if you are a Republican. If you are an Independent, vote for anyone of your choosing in the primary and general election except the incumbent running for reelection. When enough of us follow this prescription, our nation will begin to heal, and our democracy restored to its original purpose: to remove those in power who abuse the privileges of having it on our behalf.

By David R. Remer
Published: October 20, 2009 3:05 PM
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