#121 (Equivocal) Wisdom of the Week

• The AARP putting pressure on the Senate Health, Education, etc. Committee, the one responsible for getting a Reform proposal to the floor, to put pressure on Big Pharma to loosen up on generic drug availability and cost. Speaking for 40 million strong (I'm one), the AARP should be able to make their voice heard. This is a step forward, BUT ... rather narrow and self-serving. Their private, non-profit (but money-making) health insurance wing would be a direct beneficiary of such cost reduction. Speaking for 40 million strong, the AARP should put pressure on the whole of Congress to COMPREHENSIVELY get us out of this mess ... and closer to the goal of affordable health care (if not single-payer) for all.
  

• US House of Representatives passing The American [who else?] Clean Energy an Security Act ... barely. Again, a step forward, BUT ... it passed by a slim margin. What's wrong with these people? Big Oil is still pulling some strings, evidently, even among Democrats. The opportunity-window to control global warming is closing ever more quickly. And the bill, for all it's lack of consensus, is pretty weak. It allows major polluters (e.g. Big Coal) off the hook by allowing them to buy federal permits that allow them to continue to pollute! LOL. Called "cap and trade," the moneys so generated would go for development of clean-energy resources, while the polluters supposedly clean up their act in the meantime. Mazel tov.

• S.C. Gov. Mark Sanders planning NOT to resign. Whoop-tee-doo, he's got a sordid family life, (Libertarian alert) but that's his private business, and not the State's. Worse, of course, he's an execrable hypocrite of the lowest Republican ilk (like Gingrich and Vitter, he was all over Clinton), not only touting their medieval brand of "family values," but forever trying to impose and legislate it upon others--Defense Of Marriage Act and all that--even as they are exposed for the rascals they are (fill in the the latest holier-than-thou Republican scandal or two). Sanders even used the Bible to justify adulterous politicians staying in office: King David! Typical. Odious. No reason to resign, however, from his publicly elected office. South Carolina deserves what it got. Let his constituents vote him out. BUT ... if he knows that his "legitimate trade mission" to Argentina was actually contrived and not properly sanctioned; and if tax-payer's money was used for diddling his mistress, then he should resign, and save his fellow citizens the cost of impeachment proceedings. Enough tabloid politics!

************