Filibuster Please

Since the big flood here on wonderful Delmarva, I have pumped more water than the politicians who run or governments have pumped bull shit, and that’s a mess of water. I would be ashamed to share with but the most sympathetic of friends what rig I have put together to move water to the sump; let me just say that Rube Goldberg would be more than proud. This contraption involves a plastic, perforated paint stirrer, an old 3/8 inch nap paint roller, resurrected from the trash can, one partially melted eight foot piece of gutter, twelve feet of squashed plastic gutter, and two ten foot pieces of aluminum corner metal. Also involved are an old coffee pot, a 1 x 3, an empty tube of Liquid Nails, two golf balls, and a rubber band. It works, sort of, sending about 50 percent of the leak to the pump. I broke down in a deep sweat yesterday, tired of vacuuming and sweeping, sore from a recently pulled number 2 tooth, and headed to Home Depot for a “liquid transfer” pump. These pumps are used to move water out of aquariums and water beds. Sadly, there has been a run on them, none in sight, could-have-sold-a-thousand-if-we-had-them, Gonzo. I tried the electric-drill-driven pump, a cheap and cheap-looking plastic device, to find it had succumbed to Chinese, planned obsolescence. So, I quit, turned on the recording of the world championship of goose calling, opened the basement window, scattered some local corn about, shut the door to the basement, and will not open it again until I hear Canada geese splashing about.

Now, I have time for important stuff: writing to my fine elected officials daring them to pass this bill on health care, pleading with them all to filibuster, to read Martha Stewart’s cook book collection, transcripts from Rust Limpbag and Glenn Buck, anything, even Ann Catler. I can stand any sorts of torture as long as it defeats the current health care bill which is cobbled together worse than my water transfer system in the basement and will work not to deliver sane well-thought-out improvement to our burdensome health care debacle.

Our ball-less congress has done just what they have done since forever: they have shafted the tax payers and enhanced big business, namely the insurance companies who have spent half a billion dollars in six months lobbying against any plan that would make them compete for and improve their business. The insurance companies will not have to move about in a competitive free trade market. Instead they have lobbied for and won the right to keep their monopolies on providing health care insurance. They will be generously protected because there is no provision to allow us to shop from state to state for the best buys in health care. Furthermore they have garnered anti-trust protection that makes baseball’s monopoly look like the Mother Teresa’s hospitals for the poor. Probably, they will get a tort-reform which will limit what individuals can do to incompetent doctors but will give up absolutely nothing for it. They will have less money to pay out by billions but will not cut their fees, premiums, bonuses, or bottom line profits one cent. We desperately need health care reform, elimination of monopolies, reduction in fraud, reduction in waste and reduction in costs. If you are thinking the screwing we are getting from Wall Street sets your hackles upright, when the truth about how we are getting robbed by the current health care bill gets out, you will lose your hair. As long as the republicans can make it seem like the democrats are socialists, communists, and Rastafarians, and as long as the democrats keep wasting time trying to shove the republicans out of the bed they share with lobbyists, we lose. As long as the crooks in your state houses and in DC have anything to do with it, you can bet your last doubloon that the only ones who will benefit from a health care bill will be the doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies.

Using the time I save by not vacuuming another drop from my basement, I am going to start emailing, pleading for the offices of my representatives to nix this plan and any plan that gives unfettered monopolies to insurance businesses and fails to address the wastes and fraud in the business. But,I know that all the typing will be for naught: trying to get a politician to do the honest thing is as useless as trying to get water to stop running.

PS I truly enjoyed reading the comments on my last post. One to which I shall respond later on.