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Democrats Going Down in Flames

Martha Coakley’s Corporate Connections

By Russel Mokhiber | January 15, 2010

Martha Coakley is going down in flames.

So is the Democratic Party.

Why?

We found the answer earlier this week at – of all places – The Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

Timothy Carney was giving a powerpoint presentation about his new book: Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses.

Here’s the book in a nutshell:

“Both parties are the parties of big business,” Carney said. “They both promote corporate socialism.”

I sat there in the front row at Cato, in wonder.

Listening to the talk – as Carney outlined how Obama had cut deals with Billy Tauzin and the pharmaceutical industry.

Thinking to myself – is this why Martha Coakley is having such a hard time in Massachusetts?

She’s just another corporate Dem — just like Obama?

Then, lo and behold, as if I was channeling Carney, he calls up a slide on his powerpoint.

On the big screen at Cato is an invitation to a corporate fundraiser – that night at the Sonoma Restaurant on Capitol Hill – for Coakley.

And I say to myself – wait a second.

Coakley is in the middle of a tight race and she’s flying to DC one week before the election to be with a group of corporate lobbyists?

Yes.

She is.

And then Carney went down the list of 22 members of the host committees – meaning they each raised $10,000 or more for Coakley.

“Seventeen are federally registered lobbyists, 15 of whom have health-care clients,” Carney said.

“You see the names – Gerald Cassidy, David Castagnetti,, Tommy Boggs – those are all lobbyists I’ve highlighted there who have clients who are drug companies, health insurers, hospitals or all three,” Carney said. “AHIP, Phrma, Pfizer, Blue Cross – everybody is covered there. Aetna somehow isn’t. I don’t know how they got left out.”

“These are the special interests,” Carney said. “These are the people trying to elect Martha Coakley to be vote number 60 for health insurance.”

Carney then puts up a slide showing how the Phrma cash went from supporting Republican candidates for President in the past – to supporting Barack Obama in 2008.

“Barack Obama raised $2.1 million from drug companies in 2008,” Carney said. “That’s about equal to what John McCain raised plus what George Bush raised in both of his elections. It’s the most by far any candidate has raised from the drug industry.”

The people of Massachusetts already have tried a corporate reform that forces them to buy junk insurance.

They don’t like it.

They’re waiting for a candidate that will deliver a message they’ve been waiting to hear.

Single payer.

Everybody in.

Nobody out.

Put the private insurance companies out of business.

Drive down the cost of drugs to the levels of say Canada or the UK.

But Obama, Coakley and the Democrats are awash in corporate cash.

They have made their choice.

And they deserve to lose.

Onward to single payer.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of Single Payer Action.

Source

January 15, 2010 - Posted by | Corruption, Progressive Hypocrite

10 Comments »

  1. Amen. But what do we get instead? People that will take us even FURTHER from single payer should they succeed in ousting the Dems.

    Political social structures inhibit viable 3rd parties… and people have been led by the media to believe there is something noble about being a “centrist” as if the truth always lies in the middle somewhere.

    Guess we just have to wait for the system to collapse before building something that serves humanity in a worthwhile fashion.

    Like

    Comment by Andrew P. | January 15, 2010 | Reply

  2. If only the Dems would go down in flames. And the Repubs. Two sides of the same coin. What we have here is failure. Failure of the entrenched to LISTEN to the little folk. You know, the little folk that pay the taxes and foot the bailouts and suffer just a little more so the entrenched can have a lot more.

    Like

    Comment by skulz fontaine | January 15, 2010 | Reply

  3. Put the libertarians in first to dismantle huge
    government and get the spending down and then
    move to progressive social democrats to but up
    social services. Either that or lock and load

    Like

    Comment by Fred in Boston | January 15, 2010 | Reply

  4. We have a perfectly viable libertarian candidate on the
    ballot here, Joe Kennedy, VOTE for him and send a message

    Like

    Comment by Fred in Boston | January 15, 2010 | Reply

  5. I agree with the presentation about the Obombanation that is destroying the nation as BUSH III ‘butt fucking you can believe in’ takes the nation into defaulting on its massive debt load.

    but the CATO institute has the credibility of a used condom. Those guys might as well merge with the American Enterprise, or “I’ll cornhole you till you’re blind, ship your kids to Israel’s wars, and steal your assets from you whilst smiling broadly and handing out FAUX NOIZE CHUNNEL crap to you in porn pamphlets on street corners..”

    If we weren’t so ‘over with’ as a republic, I’d say a THIRD PARTY would save us, but it’s too late. the DEMS and GOP scum have flushed us down the toilet and this turd is not going to float back up again.

    it’s over. in two years, there’ll be revolution and insurrection once it sinks in. count on it. rioting and cities burning. people dying. government collapsing.

    thanks to the collusion and conspiracy of the TWO PARTY loot the mind dead sheeple system of ‘no checks, no balances, only unparalled looting and pillaging..’

    we’re almost there. the nation is over with. CATO can go to hell with their American Enterprise buddies they sleep with.

    Like

    Comment by CATO IS A RIGHT WING STINK TANK | January 15, 2010 | Reply

  6. Why not forget all of this nonsense and have everyone pay cash (msa’S), except for a catastrophic policy and community clinics/religious hospitals for the indigent?

    Like

    Comment by Turksih Taffy | January 15, 2010 | Reply

  7. What is most appallingly frightful is the fact that for a few millions in political contributions (i.e. payoffs) one can loot billions, and now trillions and get away with it.

    Like

    Comment by Hand Solo | January 15, 2010 | Reply

  8. President Obama could rescue his party by ending the war in Iraq as he promised to do. He has not done it and will not do it, even if it costs him reelection. Why not? Maybe he does not have the power. Maybe he already tried and was told “No.” Maybe, as comedian Bill Hicks used to joke, he was shown an excellent quality video of the JFK assassination from an angle we have never seen. Or maybe the guy is just a lying politician like all the rest.

    Like

    Comment by Richard | January 15, 2010 | Reply

  9. If Obama ended the war, I fear he would be assasinated, racist groups would be blamed and law enforcement would be given new powers to turn every American into a suspect. American sheeple would go along with it in order to stop racist militias that only seem to exist when Democrats are in office.

    The only thing we should all clearly agree upon at this point is that the presidency itself has become the office of a stooge. Obama and Bush are nothing but boot-licking puppets on strings, doing the bidding of their real masters.

    But anyone who points this out to a Republican gets called unpatriotic and anyone who points it out to a Democrat gets called racist. Both sides think the same idiotic Orwellian groupthink.

    I think the only solution is to network with like-minded people and prepare an action plan for when the ship goes down. No need to revolt against anything, its going down of its own hedonistic stupidity and the longer it takes, the more prep time we have to build community.

    Like

    Comment by Jay | January 15, 2010 | Reply

  10. Jay, you kind of hit it on the head. The PUPPET role has been sold to the ‘sheeple’ as if it were indeed a power role, which it is not. I blame this asshole, Obama, not so much for being ineffective, but for thinking we’re all so fucking ignorant and or stupid to not see him as a goddamned marionette that the Rothschilds banking cartel controls just like every other zionist controlled PUPPET that existed before him. In John F. Kennedy’s case, he forgot for a moment he was a Rothschilds zionist jew PUPPET, and then he penned a thing called Executive Order 11110, ending the FED and pulling that shekel grubbing shit they printed off the streets of Amerika. Between this, and the fact he wanted DIMONA SHUT DOWN, this got marionette and or PUPPET John Fitzgerald Kennedy assassinated by the same government he hallucinated he was in charge of..by the very same FBI and CIA that allegedly answered to him as the marionette.

    As we sink closer toward the anarchy and the shit storm, Jay, it is important that the leaders amongst us be prepared to warn the military to stay OUT OF OUR NEIGHBORHOODS or risk being shot on sight. We don’t need a completely manifested POLICE STATE in the aftermath of the collapse of the fetid and dank puppet government that sold us to the Rothschilds banking cartel. We need local leaders who urge their fellow citizens to not just run amok and destroy, but help us protect and preserve our community until a truly LEGITIMATE AND SANE GOVERNMENT can be formed out of the rubble, rising much like the Phoenix bird out of the ashes of a total, utter ‘farce’ we have lived under since 1913 when the FED was established and we all became worker slaves for the Rothschilds.

    We need to organize and build, Jay. But we need to totally dismantle and disconnect the rotting tentacles of the zionist bankers who took us under, and that is first an foremost priority in the aftermath of the revolution that is coming. If we don’t, we are doomed to fail.

    Law and Order, Rule of Law. The Magna Carta. Restored, in a sane, democratic socialist order of human beings not bent on getting something for nothing. There is no such thing as ‘something for nothing’ and we cannot fix something that never worked in the first place. It all must be replaced by something that does work, and that must be built by all of us, one person at a time.

    This is not communism. It’s SANITY.

    Like

    Comment by THE PUPPETANCY OF FOOLHARDY COMPLACENT MORON SAVANTS CALLED THE ELECTORATE | January 15, 2010 | Reply


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