[Peace-discuss] If voting could change things...

[C. G. Estabrook]

 From <http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/01-6>:

...In his first year Obama chose to continue numerous Bush Administration 
policies, many of which originated in the far extreme wing of the GOP. Each of 
the following asterisks represents a broken campaign promise:

	*Keeping the Guantánamo torture camp open
	*Continuing the war against Iraq
	*Expanding the war against Afghanistan
	*Renewing the USA Patriot Act
	*No-string bank bailouts
	*Continuing "military commission" kangaroo trials
	*Reserving the right to torture
	*Continuing the NSA's "domestic surveillance" program
	of spying on innocent Americans' emails and phone calls

It took over a year, but Obama can finally point to two legislative 
achievements: healthcare reform and reducing private banks' role in the issuance 
of student loans. The student loan bill, though a step in the right direction, 
is liberal but too modest. Student loans ought to be replaced by grants. 
Ultimately, universities and colleges will have to be nationalized.

Obama's revamp of healthcare, on the other hand, goes too far, perverting the 
liberal desire to provide healthcare for all Americans into a transfer of wealth 
from poor to rich that the hard right never dreamed of.

Buying into the classic, flawed, American assumption that a bad system can't get 
worse (ask the Iraqis and Afghans), ObamaCare entrusts 30 million new customers, 
to the tune of roughly ten grand a year each, to the tender mercies of private 
insurance companies.

ObamaCare pours hundreds of billions of dollars, some from taxpayers, the rest 
from poor people, into the gaping coffers of giant corporations.  Once people 
find themselves paying even more for visits to the same crappy doctors and 
hospitals they can't afford now, they'll hold the Dems responsible at the polls...


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