Mr. President, You Dance With the One that Brought You!

In 2008, Mr. President, the American independents and progressives donated $5, $10, as much as they could afford to get you the money necessary to run in the primaries. They worked hard getting the vote out for you and making phone calls and mailing mailers and knocking on doors for you.  They did it for the promise you gave of hope – young and old, male and female, black, white and Hispanic.   They voted for you in the primaries and in the general election.  They supported you when the Pelosis, Reids, Hoyers, Emanuels, and the Democratic National Committee were supporting the likes of Clinton and her husband.  Harry Reid claims he encouraged you to run, and maybe he did so that you would lose and show that a black man could not be elected in the US, but a woman could – that is why he and Pelosi did not endorse you, they expected, yes, even wanted, you to lose.  The American people who voted for you did so because they trusted you, sir, and at one time, you trusted them as well.  Apparently not anymore.

Ever since you allowed the Clintons and the DNC to staff your White House and Cabinet; since you allowed Pelosi and Reid to stand on the lawn of the White House and declare that they would not be dictated to by this White House;  since you allowed your generals to challenge your commands in the press; and since you allowed lobbyists to come in the back door while you said they were not welcome at the front door, you have abandoned the American people.

And now, your health care bill is the same one that Hillary Clinton and her corporate allies in your administration and Congress could not push through in 1994, and it is just as onerous and hateful to the American people and as big a gift to the insurance industry as hers was.  And it was negotiated the same way – behind closed doors with corporate lobbyists and Rahm Emanuel calling the shots. Your mother would be turning in her grave, because you are not only rubber-stamping what was done to her, you are forcing millions upon millions of Americans to face the same thing.  This is a bill that should be vetoed and you should name names as to why – start with your Chief of Staff as you show him the door for his backroom negotiating tactics with health care and pharma lobbyists; Bart Stupak with his anti-woman agenda and Catholic Church policy making; Harry Reid for allowing Baucus and Grassley to trash the health care bill; the Democrats for inserting the fine for not having insurance; the Republicans for gutting the public option, supported  by the Blue Dogs; and yourself for failing to keep to the agenda you promised when all those Americans who needed real, people-friendly health care reform were supporting your campaign with their money and their time.

Now you want to move on to jobs creation, education reform, and financial reform.  But the sad truth is that as long as you allow the DNC to control the agenda in Congress and in your White House, and the Clinton faction to control the DNC, you will get nothing of what you promised Americans, and Congress will let you take the fall.  You have failed to introduce any bill for education reform that is going to actually help the majority of our children – only a rehash of charter schools and No Child Left Behind which left just about every child in America behind.  You have allowed Dodd to craft a financial reform bill that is nothing but Swiss Cheese there are so many loopholes for the financial industry to slither through, and yet you follow the advice of the two men who could have, had they done their jobs properly, have averted the current economic disaster in which most Americans live today, and in which you once lived yourself.  The Reid Jobs Bill and the House bill are jokes, especially the $1000 tax credit and tax holiday.  Are you so ignorant of tax law that you do not understand that the 6.2% not paid by the businesses will be paid on April 15th by the taxpayer who must make up the difference under Social Security laws for any shortfalls, just as though they were self-employed?  And what small business person considers $1000 tax credits as offsets for the salary and now mandatory benefits that they must pay for each new employee, which can run into the tens of thousands of dollars?  This bill is a joke and a slap in the face to every worker and small business person in America.

Mr. President, the independent and progressive Americans who voted you into office were the same ones that got you the nomination in the first place.   They are the ones whose money made up more than half of what you raised to become President.  They trusted you, and you allowed the people to be betrayed by those who now advise you.  This is not transformational leadership, it is pandering to corruption at its worst, or just plain stupidity on your part.

But, there is a way to change your fortunes, and for you to regain the trust of the American people, and it starts now.  Sir, you must address the American people, accept the blame for following bad advice and counsel, and start cleaning house.  Get rid of Rahm Emanuel and his corps of lobbyists immediately.

Put in people who can advise you on economics that can actually save this nation and re-establish strong local businesses with sound economic policies to support them – start with Elinor Ostrom and her people.  And you get rid of the notion that a government should be run like a business – it is not a business, it is not meant to make a profit, and it is meant to serve the public good, and the public good, only!  Principles that work in business do not work in government, and it is what has led to an overbloated governmental structure in this nation with more money going to bureaucracy than to the people, just a more money goes to stockholders than goes to workers in a business.  In government, this is wrong, and anyone who understands this knows that corporate control of our government will not help the people, only harm them.

Get rid of war generals and find generals who can actually find ways to get our people home while allowing NGOs and NPOs to come into Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuild – not the Xe or KBR groups – but people who understand the culture and the way it actually works for the people.

You tell the Democrats in Congress that unless they back any bill you send that will actually help the American people, that you will personally campaign for any progressive challenger for their seats, and you will send out your original grassroots organizing staff to set up the progressive, independent’s campaign to bury them.  Stop DNC funding to Blue Dogs and tell Pelosi and Reid that if they continue to capitulate to the Republicans, they will need to find new employment come next January.  Take control of the party you are the titular head of now, Sir, instead of letting them dictate to you, that is what Clinton did and what you should have done as soon as you had the nomination.

You want to reform health care – veto this bill, and fire Sebelius at HHS.  Draft a new bill with removal of tax-exempt status for insurance companies; regulate their rates and their policies; give people a Medicare buy-in option; and tell the pharmaceutical and health care industry that the government will negotiate lower prices for anyone it deems necessary.

You want educational reform – get rid of Duncan and bring in Kozol or Hooks or one of the other experts on community-based, freedom based education.  You build a strong nation by building strong communities, and until you embrace that fact, you will still see 70% dropout rates, poor teaching, bankrupted teachers, and crumbling schools.  Charter schools are not the answer – rebuilding good free public education is what this nation needs, with strong emphasis not just on math and science, but on history, government, English, the arts, physical education, and community service.  Thomas Jefferson knew this, that is why Texas is moving to remove him from textbooks as too radical – the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and our Bill of Rights is too radical for our children to know about?  This is not reform, this is revisionist, and only real educational reform can change this.

You want financial reform – re-enact Glass-Steagall; nationalize the too-big-to-fail banks and break them up, giving stockholders 1:1 stock trades for the smaller banks; put strong restrictions on investor banks and break them out from commercial banks, once again depriving them of FDIC protection (investors are warned of risks, savers are not).  You also need to sue and/or criminally prosecute those executives who knowingly pursued and still pursue the transactions that led to the collapse in 2008.  And you need to fire Bernanke and Geithner NOW!

You need to push through a Constitutional Amendment stripping corporations of personhood and prohibiting them from being active in any political forum, either directly, through PACs, or through lobbying.  Members of corporations should be prohibited from holding government positions for up to 5 years after they leave the corporation, including appointees, staff, and members of Congress.  IN other words, get corporations out of our government structure.

And, finally, Sir, you need to realize that you are not going to be able to go forward in a free society until the truth of the last 8 years under Bush and Cheney is fully disclosed and they and their cohorts are held accountable in a court of law.  America has an open wound, and it is called fear.  It is fed daily by FOX News and the GOP standard bearers like Liz Cheney, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and the GOP fearmongers in Congress like Bachmann, McCain, Lieberman, Boehner, Cantor, and the rest of them.  Until America knows the full truth of how the previous administration stripped away their rights and their lives, there will be no peace in this nation, and groups like the Tea Partiers and the conspiracy theorists will thrive spreading hate and violence.  You have no choice – you must prosecute, no matter where the chips may fall (Clinton, Pelosi, Reid?).

You start with a mea culpa, Sir, and ask Americans to allow you to regain their trust, then you ask Americans to once again step up and support local independents, progressive Democrats or just progressive candidates of any party, and you campaign to win back America, this time honestly and without DNC guidance.  You are the President of the United States, and if you truly want to lead this nation forward, you must change now and stop pandering to the DNC and the corporations that back it.

Remember, Mr. President, you dance with the one that brought you to the dance, and in this case, that is the American People, not the corporations or the DNC.