“8/14/2009, 5:14pm EST”
Big surprise
The American Petroleum Institute (among many contemptible others) are planning to appropriate the angry mob strategy — playing out ad nauseum in regard to healthcare reform to the seeming benefit of Republicans and healthcare corporations — for their upcoming fight against climate legislation.**
This corporate class has already used lobbyists and hired guns in Congress to water down the House climate bill, a piece of legislation that even many environmentalists won’t support for being too weak.
Next up: the self-serving powerful will again seek to manipulate ignorant American-public pawns — most of whom ironically believe they are saving this country from imagined threats — into taking radical action against their own legitimate interests.
The healthcare and climate legislative processes should highlight an important reality for Obama and progressive Democrats: it doesn’t matter how much you give away to the Republicans, Blue Dogs, and corporations you’ve invited to the bargaining table in the name of compromise or bipartisanship. They will nearly always maneuver to kill progressive efforts — if only with the hand behind their back — because it is in their personal interest to do so; these are neither moral operators nor serious truth seekers.
**A compromised climate bill has passed narrowly in the House, but nothing has passed in the Senate, where the difficulties are thought to be even greater. If the Senate does pass something, it may very well be much worse than the House bill; no matter what, it will then have to be reconciled with the House version. So there is plenty of time to muddy the water further.
Never leave home without it.
