(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Dennis Kucinich gave an exclusive interview to The Raw Story”, where he provided analysis on the MA Election, and the state of the Democratic Party, and President Obama.
Some excerpts:
“You ask the banks to reform banking?” Put the insurance companies to reform insurance? Call in nuclear to reform energy policies? Are you kidding me? The Obama administration was giving Wall Street banks immunity and too big to fail protection. They even pride themselves on that.
People know when things get to that point, it’s time to stay stop. Stop what you’re doing. Don’t make another move. Slow it down. That’s the message from Massachusetts.
There’s nothing liberal about the [Corporate] bailouts. There’s nothing liberal about standing by and watching banks use public money to get their executive bonuses. There’s nothing liberal about giving insurance companies carte blanche to charge anything they want for health care… Since when did that become liberal? There’s nothing liberal about letting coal and oil write climate change legislation. Are you kidding me?
People elected Democrats in 2008 to change the country’s direction. And the same entrenched interests that George Bush could not shake, this current White House is having great difficulty in shaking. One could suggest they might be more entrenched than ever.
The minute the president appointed Tim Geithner and Larry Summers to key policy positions, and the minute that [Ben] Bernanke was named to head the Fed again, we’re looking at people who participated in the decline of the economy. This group has done us a disservice. Every area of the economy is still about taking wealth from the great mass of people and putting it into the hands of a few. If you don’t have a economic democracy, you don’t have a political democracy.”
In regards to the Health Care debacle:
“We lost the initiative the minute that our party jumped into bed with the insurance companies. And soon they were looking at increasing taxes as a way of subsidizing insurance companies. It’s just madness. We’re redistributing the wealth of the nation upwards by giving the insurance companies 30 million new customers, $50 billion a year more in revenue. The senate bill is so totally flawed that I don’t think it can get the votes in the House to pass. I certainly wouldn’t vote for it.
Health care became too complex and too riddled with concessions to insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. It’s really time to take a new direction and that direction has to be back to the American people.
Well, which direction are we building in?” Kucinich responded. “If we give insurance companies a monopoly on health care, if we put no controls on premiums, if we give them antitrust exemptions… Is this the direction we build in to protect health care for people, or to protect insurance companies?
Democrats need to take a more aggressive stance. We still have enough time to recover. A political eternity exists between now and November. Plenty of time. But we have to really reset the pointer of our political direction.”
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I heart Dennis
Interesting that it was Kucinich who was ridiculed at the orange site during the presidential campaign. He is one of the few in the party who have guts and principle.
Kos isn’t crashing the gates.
Obama isn’t giving us hope.
The blathersphere needs to wake up from its coma.
Author
like the little guy.
(If you hadn’t noticed, I’m hoping this phrase catches on.)
if the democrats are so bad, why do progressive dems stay in the party? Why don’t they join the greens or become a new progressive party. Why does Sanders continue to caucus with them? Kucinich and Feingold, and the others should leave the party. They are totally marginalized by the Democratic party and always will be.
Serving that noble purpose of countering evil thought patterns and all of that yet they have not done the JFK thing. Perhaps he just does not expose enough of the sum total of corruption that does exist.
management teams are myth creators, using their wealth and
influence to develop the idea that “our way of life” is constantly threatened, and needs to be protected at all cost.
We are now an empty Republic based upon catchy phrases, slogans, logos, name brands, fads, and narcissism. Everthing is for sale, and always on sale. There are daily specials and discounts, and they’re always offered with insurance.
Unfortunatley our economy is like a compulsory slot machine: we have to play it in order to get the goodies, while the house is guaranteed regular profits, because they program the stupid thing.
Politics is like telling the people that they’ll get new machines that are more fair, but they will be expensive and may not be feasible at the moment. But the house knows that even if the people continue losing, they’ll still play, because it’s the only game in town.