Early Returns on 2021
W.J. Astore
So far, 2021 is looking much like 2020. Nancy Pelosi is once again Speaker of the House, with progressive leaders like AOC extracting no meaningful concessions for their votes. Jimmy Dore had suggested progressives could use their leverage over Pelosi to force a vote in the House on Medicare for All, but of course the progressives caved and cravenly supported Pelosi, who like Joe Biden is against Medicare for All.
America, you will never get a single-payer, publicly-funded, health care system. If you can't even get a vote on one during a pandemic that will soon kill 400,000 Americans, you will never get a vote. America's health care system is a wealth-extraction system that profits off the sick and dying. That system simply will not change because politicians like Pelosi and Biden are bought and paid for. Short of a revolution or a truly progressive third party, Americans will continue to suffer bankruptcy and death due to our for-profit wealth-care system that puts profit before patients.
Trump, meanwhile, is conspiring along with a dozen or so sycophantic senators to contest the election he lost. Trump, who has the virtue of saying the quiet part out loud, pressured the Georgia secretary of state to "find" about 12,000 votes for him so that he could be declared the winner. This circus is the lead story in U.S. media today, as if Trump has finally put his foot in it. But he'll soon pardon himself, I'd wager, and even if he doesn't the incoming Biden administration won't do anything to prosecute him on any charge.
In other news, Americans will have to be satisfied with means-tested $600 checks (don't spend that all in one place), instead of the $2000 checks that Trump advocated for. Interesting, that princess of virtue, Nancy Pelosi, was perfectly satisfied with $600 checks until Trump demanded $2000. Only then did Pelosi mount a weak effort for the higher figure, which was quickly killed by Scrooge himself, Mitch McConnell. Suck on that, America.
Speaking of Trump failures and revealing moments in Congress, Trump's veto of the NDAA (the Pentagon budget) was easily overturned, as America's representatives professed their bipartisan support of "our" troops. I'll believe in that "support" when Congress finally acts to end America's disastrous wars overseas. Perhaps on the twelfth of never?
Finally, it was good to hear that Julian Assange will not be extradited to the U.S., though the judge's ruling in the UK was made on the narrow grounds that the U.S. prison system is so oppressive that Assange would likely commit suicide here, given his current mental state. Of course, the U.S. government doesn't care that much about prosecuting and imprisoning Assange. Assange, like Chelsea Manning, Reality Winner, and other whistleblowers, has been made an example of. This is all about intimidation of journalists and other potential whistleblowers, and it's working.
Readers, what's caught your eye in the opening week of 2021?