Tom Daschle?

When I heard the name of Obama’s pick to lead his (our) healthcare initiative as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, my heart fell. An irrational wave of anger swept over me, as the depth of his betrayal became clear. Obama was obviously as much in the pocket of industry special interests as any previous politician. As the first burst of anger slowly ebbed away, in its place, like loose grains off sand carried up by the tide, was left an aching sense of loss. The jagged pieces of my shattered hope lay scattered about me waiting for me to cut my fingers as I tried to pick them up the morning after the big party.

How could this name be the cause of such profound pain to only a scant few people in America, when the impact will soon reach far and wide? The incredulous choice of the craven and corrupt Tom Daschle begins a sad story of how, once more we have been sold down the river like weary plantation slaves to the wealthy elite who work us in their cotton fields of corporate healthcare until we collapse from financial exhaustion…

It all started back in 1996, when a nation reeling from the drunken euphoria of overturning the corrupt George Herbert Walker Bush regime in an electoral revolution harkening to the Lexington and Concord insurrections of 1776, swept a villainous cacophony of Equity Lords and corporate sycophants from power by electing a poor boy from Arkansas and his brilliant, but slightly unnerving lawyer/wife as our hope for a brave new future.

The world stood breathless as William Jefferson Clinton took the oath of office, while his homely and slightly frigid wife held Lincoln’s Bible in her small hands. Those close to the ceremony where taken aback as they observed that a hoar frost slowly crept over the historic religious tome in her little icy palms, crackling the pages and rich leather binding of the 100 year old Bible, as her husband completed repeating the words of the Chief Justice. Only Hillary knew the evil about to be silently unleashed on the unwitting public, crushing the long-kept hope for real change in healthcare in the United States.

Alas, change did not come. Eight long years of corporate schmoozing by the First Family, unprecedented swilling at the corporate trough by the Clinton Administration courtiers, and continuous “bungling” and obstruction by the First Lady as the head of the Presidents Commission on Healthcare Reform, while the President himself, distracted by rounds of surreptitious fellatio in the Oval Office, hob-knobbed with health industry executives and girded himself in their corporate largesse, yielded the people a great big, sloppy overflowing bucket of nothing in the “healthcare system”. We used quotes on the term “healthcare system”, because it is really more akin to a wild boy raised by wolves and then fed upon by vampires bats and great bloated ticks, as opposed to an actual functioning system built with planning and forethought.

It took eight long years for the people of the nation to realize that nothing was going to be accomplished by the Clinton Administration in healthcare that would actually be of benefit them. After this cloudy realization, like waking up in a stranger’s living room in your underwear after a weekend bender stinking of cheap liquor and cigarettes, did the people’s true despair really set it. The people gave up on the dream and the healthcare corporations, invigorated by their victory over the hopes of the people, surged forth in a renewed orgy of corporate greed and exploitation of the sick and injured. The social and economic carnage was unlike anything seen since ancient times; the sacking of Carthage, the slaughter of the 300 at Thermopile, or razing of Jerusalem by the Crusaders would be useful parallels here, as the hospital corporations took out their pent-up years of frustration on an unsuspecting population of sick and dying customers and tore their entrails out in a violent fit of billing up-coding and other financial pillaging.

Municipal and religious charity hospitals were consumed in the corporate M&A fireball the rolled across the land, scorching the earth with ceaseless destruction, as the people wailed and lamented. But there was no respite from their agony, like mongrel dogs, picking over the corpses on the strewn battlefield in the days and weeks following the great rout, big pharmaceutical companies were given license by Tom Daschle to strip the bones of the fallen by inflating the price of once inexpensive drugs using the ripping and tearing teeth of the new patent laws that allowed them to re-patent old drugs by slightly altering their delivery and removing the older alternatives from the market. As the final wave of locusts, known as insurance companies, picked the last pieces of vegetation from the land in a roiling wave of consumption, the son of the evil Emperor Bush returned with his terrifying warlord Darth Cheney, to sit upon the throne resting on the pile of skulls of the vanquished people. But, I digress, we will return to this story later.

Tom Daschle, as a bright-eyed, fair-haired young senator from South Dakota, first took his seat as a freshman Senator in 1986 on the Senate Finance Committee. In these heady days of non-existent political oversight and “blank check” of the electorate given to the Reagan administration to gut social programs on the promise of later disproven “trickle-down” economics, and the harnessing of the team of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government as the plowing brace of “rented mules” for industry., a dashing young Tom took his comfortable leather seat in the United States Senate, kissed the frozen wastelands of South Dakota goodbye forever, and began cold-calling industry lobbyists as fast as he could to latch on the “corporate teat” like a day old baby kangaroo in the pouch.

In no time at all, young Tom built an impressive record as the “go to man” in the Senate, as member of the Finance Committee and the Nutrition Committee. If your business needed a specific tax exemption or some bothersome regulation was holding back unfettered profit taking by your healthcare conglomerate; Tom was your man.

As the Reagan Administration ground slowly on, regulation was hacked like the carcass of a slaughtered steer by the new Congress, the constitution was bent, and “reinterpreted” to bring a showering of money and favor to billionaire corporate investors and fantastically wealthy hospital corporation and pharmaceutical company executives. The golden age of company building was upon us, and the people were bewildered as the bills came in the mail and the doctors showered them with new medications written from pads emblazoned with the logos of drug companies and stained from the grubby hands of doctors sodden from boozy nights of schmoozing with pharmaceutical reps at “informational seminars”. Luckily, new mood stabilization drugs such as Xanax, and Paxil eased the pain of the people while their savings accounts withered and their paychecks were devoured by healthcare premiums and FICA deductions. In heaven, the angels wept at the people’s suffering, but the people themselves were blind to their own agony.

The people blamed the “liberal media”, and homosexuals, and foreigners for their problems. Talk radio hosts created myths and legends to obscure the truth, because as uneducated fools with smooth voices and “gravitas”, they themselves did not know the truth. So, they invented monsters and demons of convenience and flogged them for our suffering. We believed and cheered Reagan for bashing these monsters, as he rode into battle against airline regulation, interstate banking rules, limits on healthcare companies, controls on insurance corporations, the agenda of homosexuals, and basic dogma of liberals of all sorts. We cheered as he slashed through the ranks of air traffic controllers as they demanded safety rules and fair pay. We huzzahed him as he allowed airline executives to enrich themselves with borrowed money as they looted the pension savings of employees. The people cried “more!” as he tore apart an airline industry that was the envy of the free world. We wept with joy as he smashed the castle walls of interstate banking regulations that protected our savings and kept rabidly slobbering rouge bankers in check for centuries.

Meanwhile, Tom Daschle did not fight this great partisan evil as it swept over the land… no… he looked for opportunity, and of course it came. It came just the same. In his second year as a member of the Senate Finance Committee, Tom helped to break the promises of his first year on the committee by bringing the largest Medicare tax increase in history.

Tom voted “YES!” on changes to the rules restricting personal bankruptcy, as poor sick people writhed under the heavy weight of crushing healthcare debt. Incidentally, credit card companies lauded Tom’s bravery on this issue and rewarded him with large contributions. Tom voted “YES!” on tearing down the FCC’s power to approve large media conglomerates. His friends in the media industry even a chariot to wheel around Washington. He voted “YES!” on telcomm industry deregulation, and then stood back in awe as these fabled giants of AT&T, MCI Worldcom, the Bell’s, and ITT teetered and crumbled at his feet.

After this storied career in the Senate, Tom moved comfortably to the business world and became a “special policy advisor” for a Washington heathcare lobbying firm of Alston & Bird. He couldn’t actually work for the firm, because it would violate Senate Ethics rules baring office holders from lobbying after serving. But, to get around that bothersome restriction all it took was a “special title” and Tommy could get his $2 million in compensation from powerful healthcare interests. Of course, the remainder of his $5.5 million in compensation came from other powerful interests.

Meanwhile, back in 2009 the new President vowed “put an end to the revolving door in Washington and ban lobbyists from his administration”. That brings us to Daschle. As a former lobbyist for the healthcare industry, why would the new President appoint him to the most important post in his administration for healthcare policy?

The answer to that important question we may never know. Mr. Daschle bowed out of the race even I as drafted this note…