So "health care reform" continues to die the death of a thousand cuts. The single-payer option never really made it off the starting blocks. Then the public option was removed in the smoke-filled rooms. In the latest work-over, thanks to Joe "What a Dick I Am" Lieberman bailing on his commitment to support it, the expansion of Medicare to support buy-in by uninsured people (a policy he supported in 2000) has been removed. In the end "health care reform" is being transformed into "more money for the bloated insurance companies" in the face of all common sense and election promises.

It isn't difficult to see why health care reform has failed. In the end you just have to follow the oldest principle of crime investigation: follow the money. Who will the new legislation benefit? The health care industry is a major employer in Lieberman's home state of Connecticut, and a major supplier of campaign funds. Those (including Lieberman) who have obstructed the legislation and transmogrified it into a bastard son of private insurance that will do little good to anyone who doesn't hold stock in pharmaceuticals or insurance companies have done so because it's in the interest of people who have funded their election campaigns.

Barack Obama or not, America really does have "the best government money can buy". And sadly that's a very poor excuse for government, as this latest debacle makes plain. The senate and the congress cannot claim to be guided by the welfare of the populace with this kind of cynical manipulation going on. Time we started to read the Declaration of Indepence again, I think. Particularly this bit:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

The (lack of) progress on healthcare reform adequately demonstrates that the current system of government in America has indeed committed "a long train of abuses and usurpations," and the outcome of the health care "debate" might even be the straw that broke the camel's back. It is genuinely destructive of the asserted rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness for the majority of its citizens, and it's time that was recognized.

Lieberman has shown himself to be unfit to hold public office, and should immediately be removed as chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Then let's get on with the revolution that the Declaration of Independence so clearly indicates as overdue ...